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Longing (2006)
Director: Valeska Grisebach
Movie review
From Time Out New York
One of the basic requirements of functional adulthood is coming to terms with roads not taken. The emotional difficulty of living with one’s decisions hovers over the moody, elliptical drama Longing. Markus (Müller) is a thirtyish metalworker and volunteer firefighter, living happily with wife Ella (Welz) in a small German town. While attending a fire brigade training conference, Markus hooks up with a waitress named Rose (Dornbusch), kicking off a seemingly inexplicable affair.A very withholding film, Longing blends an easy naturalism with moments of economical lyricism reminiscent of Claire Denis, but writer-director Valeska Grisebach’s narrative gambits yield mixed results. Omitting the scene where Markus and Rose first get together is a potentially radical move, but attributing Markus’s complete inability to remember the night to a bout of heavy drinking feels more like a gimmick designed to sidestep the issue of the relationship’s dubious plausibility. Indeed, their whole affair is a colorless sketch, as if the filmmaker hasn’t quite found a way to credibly dramatize her ideas. A beautifully framed long view of Markus and Ella standing by a lake at dusk early in the film effortlessly captures a passion that too many later scenes vainly strain for.Author: Joshua Land
Time Out New York
Cast & crew
Director: Valeska Grisebach
Producer: Peter Rommel
Cast: Andreas Müller, Ilka Welz, Anett Dornbusch, Erika Lemke, Markus Werner, Doritha Richter full cast
Duration: 88 mins
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