Director: Karsten Dahlem (Germany). Year of Release: 2023
A woman with a helmet on inside a car. Outside, another woman in driving overalls and a black and white chequered flag shouts something in French. The driver waits, then as the flag is waved once more, sets off towards a ramp. As her car takes the ramp, the camera pans down towards a row of cars, which she is trying to jump – Evel Knievel style. Something doesn’t look quite right, she’s not going to make it. As her car descends, the screen turns black.
Next time we see the woman, she’s in the back seat of a car. The woman with the flag is driving, chatting to her in French. But they’re heading towards a village in rural Germany. As they stop and start to unload, a man in the house puts down his bottle of beer. When Christina leaves the car, we notice for the first time that she’s in a wheelchair. Her friend unloads her belongings, which don’t amount to very much at all. The friend then makes her way back to France.
Christina is back home, but looks like she’d much rather be anywhere else. Because of the accident, she should qualify for social housing, but nothing is available, so she’s forced to move back in with her father Werner. Because she wasn’t insured, she can’t find somewhere else to live without spending money that she doesn’t have. Her father is happy to give her something, but can’t access the money in his account without the agreement of his ex-wife, Christina’s mother.
Christina, for her part, doesn’t want to be pitied, and known as “Chrissi in the wheelchair”. She’d left the village 7 years earlier, but this is not the sort of place that most people leave, and people remember everyone who’s gone away. A truck driver stops by, saying that it must have been 6 years since they last saw each other (Christina corrects him). Even the woman who works in the local minimart, and is now going out with Christina’s ex, tells her that she knows who she is.
The film rapidly switches between 2 time zones – the “present day”, as Christina tries to heal old wounds and make her peace with her old friends, and 7 years ago, as we slowly learn what led her to leave. This is slightly difficult for inattentive people like me, who find it difficult to spot the difference between the same actor with a new haircut or different amounts of make-up, but you gradually realise that in the scenes set in “the past”, Chrissi is wearing a nose ring.
It’s difficult to say how much plot spoilery is acceptable, because Die Geschichte einer Familie is concerned less with the revelations it makes than with how they contribute towards the implosion of the family and group of friends. But it’s difficult to talk about the reactions without even mentioning what has caused people to behave the way they do. So, if you want no spoilers at all, maybe it’s better to not read on, but I’ll try to be sparing.
The scenes set in the past see Christine with a group of friends – her partner Sascha, and their friends Murat and Jochen. It’s a typical night out on the piss, dancing in clubs, driving through the woods – the one aspect that is slightly unusual is that they’ve “borrowed” Werner’s police car. They make a night of it, and everyone looks tired and worse for wear, including Chrissi, who’s driving. She falls asleep at the wheel and swerves off the road.
Everyone is battered from the accident, none more so than Jochen, whose body is covered and taken away by paramedics. What we don’t realise immediately, but becomes more obvious as the film goes on is that Jochen is Chrissi’s brother. The “present day” part of the film is about how Chrissi, and her family and friends deal with their shock at the young man’s death. The short answer to this is: not very well at all.
For a start, it is an issue that no-one wants to talk about – hence the need for flashbacks. Chrissi and her mother move away – the daughter to pursue a career as a stunt driver (what irony), the mother on some sort of missionary work in Africa. Werner stays at home, takes an early pension and sinks into alcoholism. Jochen’s bedroom becomes a shrine which Chrissi cannot bring herself to enter – just as she dodged the funeral and can’t visit his grave.
Chrissi’s mother returns, and communication is difficult, as it is with Sascha and his new partner. Werner, in particular, is engulfed with the guilt that he rearranged the crime scene to protect his daughter. In a situation where everyone needs the support of family and friends, each one is left to deal with their problems on their own. There are a few moments of joy, or at least contentment, but these are not enough to overcome the overwhelming sadness.
For a film which starts with so much action, nothing much happens for most of the satisfyingly short running time (well, apart from two car crashes which leave one person dead and another incapacitated). Instead, we are invited to intrude on someone else’s grief – even if this someone else is a group of fictional people. It doesn’t feel like a load of fun, but it is an interesting study of how people (fail to) cope when shitty things happen.
This is a very well-acted film, which does not attempt to tell us how it expects us to react. It is more of a character study than a story which particularly leads anywhere. Things just happen, and we are left to observe the resulting implosions. I think you’ve got to be in a certain state of mind to watch the film. Nonetheless, if you’re in that sort of mood (which I was), there are much worse ways of spending a Sunday afternoon.
CinePhil 