Lina Braake

An 'audience' movie that knows exactly what it wants. It deceptively begs respectability with its display of social concern - old people, immigrant workers - similar to Fassbinder's Fear Eats the Soul. More blatantly, the film offers a package: an art house, old folks' version of The Sting. Lina Braake, evicted from her home by the bank, is left to rot in an old people's home. Teaming up with an aristocratic old man, she swindles the bank and buys a house in Sardinia for a foreign worker family. The performances should crack even the surliest spectator; but the film's judgments and comparisons become increasingly dubious as the film moves towards its upbeat ending (like the juxtaposition of the bleak old people's home with the family celebration in Sardinia, all earthy peasant vitality and room for everyone from eldest to youngest). Does writer/director Sinkel really care for his characters?