German Joys Review: Die Blaue Grenze

I saw a new German film, Die Blaue Grenze ("The Blue Border," but I think the English title will be "Quiet Love") last night, and was impressed.   

The film takes place near Flensburg, a smallish city in the extreme north of Germany, near the Danish border.  Momme Bief (Antoine Monot, Jr.) returns from an afternoon of aimless hunting near his home village of Owschlag to find his father collapsed dead in the kitchen.  Momme travels to Flensburg to notify his grandfather, who he finds camped out in his garden allotment, having fled his city apartment because it still "stinks" of the death of his wife.  After his grandfather falls asleep in his chair, Momme wanders around the allotment grounds, eventually finding his way to a very odd party during which he makes the acquaintance of the lovely Danish girl Lene (Beate Bille), who lives just north of the border taking care of her grandmother.  After being arrested for breaking into a nearby garden shed for some hanky-panky, they make the acquaintance of Inspector Poulsen (Dominique Horwitz).  Everything is cleared up without charges being filed, but fair Lene has to return herself and her melting blue eyes to Denmark, leaving the chubby, puppy-dog-like Momme behind in Germany to pine after her.

Poulsen's story is the second thread of Die blaue Grenze's plot.  He has just gone into early retirement for some reason which is never made clear, and has moved into a house in the suburbs.  Despite all his fake bonhomie (or perhaps because of it), his colleagues never grew to like him, and since he has no wife or family, his retirement is looking like a bleak stretch of aimless loneliness.  He even invites the two ex-convicts who help him move to have dinner with him, just to simulate a social existence.  Things begin looking up for him, though, when his sphinx-like woman neighbor, played by former German screen legend Hanna Schygulla, begins aggressively inserting herself into his life, much to his discomfiture.

There is a hint of magic realism in Die blaue Grenze.  The film's lonely, drifting figures are gradually brought closer to one another by means of hints and appearances that seem to come from across the border between living and dead.  This could easily have become cute or sentimental, but the first-time director, Till Franzen, blurs the divide between reality and what lies beyond skillfully and with understatement.  (Although there is some slightly obvious symbolism going on here, and David Lynch fans will notice obvious borrowings). 

Two things keep this obscure, hinted-at spiritual message from becoming cloying or obtrusive.  First, heavy doses of wry, understated, character-driven North German humor.  Most of the characters speak a North German dialect known as Plattdeutsch, whose speech rhythms and pronunciations often sound remarkably like English (Plattdeutsch can be incomprehensible to non-North Germans).  Because of the Plattdeutsch and Danish, the movie was actually shown with English subtitles.  The director, Till Franzen, has a lot of affectionate fun with his North German neighbors, who are legendary not only for their dialect but for their leisurely and very taciturn ways.  Momme consistently got laughs just by saying the town-name "Owschlag."

The second thing that saves Die blaue Grenze from soupiness is the characterization and cast. This is a movie about lonely, tongue-tied, not particularly attractive folks (except for the gorgeous Beate Bille and the stately Schygulla) without extraordinary qualities.  Thanks to nuanced acting and skilled direction, these folks come across as flawed, vulnerable, sympathetic, perhaps even lovable.  There is affectionate humor at their expense, but no condescension or mockery.  Unlike so many of his peers, the director feels no need to trick out the characters with annoying quirks and eccentricities to make them "interesting."  Getting it right when you direct a film about ordinary folks is very hard to do, but many recent German movies manage with wonderful, understated flair.

Go see Die blaue Grenze.  It's not without minor flaws, but it's promising.  Somebody give Till Franzen more film subsidies!

Comments

[Michael]

(Ups, i forgot the quotation...)

Andrew: "Most of the characters speak a North German dialect known as Plattdeutsch, whose speech rhythms and pronunciations often sound remarkably like English"

I`m a German, so this fact is not really surprising for me, because "Low German (Plattdeutsch) has commonality with the English language [...] in that it has not been influenced by the High German consonant shift except for old /ð/ having shifted to /d/. Therefore a lot of Low German words sound similar to their English counterparts."
-> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_German

By the way, the area around Flensburg, where the film takes place, is called "Angeln".
"Angeln has a significance far beyond its current small area and country terrain, in that it is believed to have been the original home of the Angles, Germanic immigrants to northern England and East Anglia, leading to their new homelands being named after them, England, from which the major world language, English, takes its name."
-> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angeln

[Michael]

I`m a German, so this fact is not really surprising for me, because "Low German (Plattdeutsch) has commonality with the English language [...] in that it has not been influenced by the High German consonant shift except for old /ð/ having shifted to /d/. Therefore a lot of Low German words sound similar to their English counterparts."
-> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_German

By the way, the area around Flensburg, where the film takes place, is called "Angeln"!
"Angeln has a significance far beyond its current small area and country terrain, in that it is believed to have been the original home of the Angles, Germanic immigrants to northern England and East Anglia, leading to their new homelands being named after them, England, from which the major world language, English, takes its name."
-> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angeln

[Jörg Roßdeutscher]

If the name "Dominique Horwitz" appears in the actors list, it's always a good idea to have a closer look.

The most german movies are terrible. Some of them are annoying stupid nonsense about laying girls on Majorca or even worse. The others are hard to consume and have something to do with "What my father did in 3rd Reich" or "A woman with a disabled child emancipates from her drinking husband, but after endless spiritual monologues with her dead mother she finally finds her unbelievable boring roots"...

Horwitz is different. The movies are intelligent, have a rich background AND its fun to look at them.

Great guy. I enjoyed his "Best of Dreigroschenoper" in the Hamburger Kammerspiele many years ago, where I saw him the first time.

Bye,
Ratti