17/05/2008

Director Andreas Dresen continues to illuminate the lives of average Germans in his new film Cloud 9 (Wolke 9) [+see also:
trailer
film profile], in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival.

Like in his previous films Grill Point [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and Willenbrock, infidelity is again a theme, though this look at the rejuvenated love life of a sixty-something is more noteworthy for its depiction of physical love between pensioners.

Inge (Ursula Werner) has been together with Werner (Horst Rehberg) for over thirty years. Suddenly, something that she always hoped for but never thought would happen to her does happen: she falls in love again, butterflies in her stomach and all.

At first Inge is just elated, and Werner astonishingly makes her character look like a young girl in an older lady’s body. The moments with her new beau, the 76-year-old Karl (Horst Westphal), are charged with the positive electricity so often associated with teenage love and first times, though both of them could not be more experienced.

Things grow complicated when Inge decides she should tell Werner, even though her daughter advises her otherwise. This is where the story stops being a teenage infatuation tale that just happens to involve older people. In Cloud 9, there are entire families, allegiances and a shared history on the line, and the future ahead of all involved could be crippled or cut short without notice.

The sex scenes take on a particular prominence in this tale and are quite explicit. They are purely functional, however, and make sense in context: it is the expression of love and a continuing appetite for life that goes beyond the age of retirement.

The film was produced by Rommel Film in co-production with Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg and with support from Arte, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, BKM, Deutscher Filmförderfonds, and the German Film Festival Filmkunstpreis. The Match Factory handles world sales.