In his short film Eigenheim, which won the Silver Medal at the 2022 Student Academy Awards, Welf Reinhart told a story about an elderly married couple stuck in a morally and socially complex living situation. In his feature debut, A Fading Man, which has just world-premiered in IFFR’s Tiger Competition, the 31-year-old German filmmaker goes for a similar set-up, with a narrative that starts from an apparently promising premise, but one that in fact does not lend itself to much creativity in further story development.

Artist and school teacher Hanne (Dagmar Manzel, last seen on the big screen in Wendla Nölle’s Quiet Freedom [+lee también:
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It turns out that Kurt has Alzheimer’s and no recollection of divorcing Hanne. He has left the short-term care home where he was placed by his daughter Samira (Lene Dax) while she was away on a business trip, and they can’t take him back against his will. Attempts to find alternative housing for him fail, so Hanne and Bernd have no other choice but to take him in – at least temporarily, as they initially believe.

In its own context, with the protagonists being decent, sensitive human beings, as they are clearly presented, this story can really only go one way. This doesn’t mean that there is nothing for the viewer to contemplate: the film deals with universal topics such as illness, ageing, remembering, forgetting and forgiving, marital love and its innumerable joys, sorrows and regrets, and Hanne’s experience as a woman and a wife, but there is little leeway for Reinhart and co-writer Tünde Sautier to create a truly emotionally engaging experience.

A Fading Man is a very conventional piece of filmmaking, a handsomely mounted drama with classic, widescreen cinematography by Micky Graeter, coloured with soft, natural light. The house, which is the key setting, is one in which Hanne and Kurt used to live together, so for her, it was still, to an extent, hosting the presence of her ex-husband even before he came back. Now acquiring a multitude of complicated and distressing emotions, it sits on the edge of an open field, with distant trees shrouded in fog against a grey sky.

Ulrike Tortora’s editing and Pablo Jókay’s gentle score, comprising piano, strings and horns, are precise and fully in service of the story, but this also underlines the obvious construction of the screenplay, which is very much by the book both in structure and in signifying details – so much so that it makes it difficult for the viewer to get immersed in its emotional aspects. There is certainly a number of touching and subtly tragicomic moments that will move some audiences, and psychologically, little can be said against Reinhart’s handling of the topic and the protagonists’ relationships, but at times, it feels like even the seasoned, acclaimed actors are aware of the predictable cause-and-effect nature of the proceedings, which prevents them from fully inhabiting their characters.

A Fading Man was produced by Germany’s Maverick Film in co-production with BR, ARTE and Merki und Reinhart film gbr. Bendita Film Sales has the international rights.