Everyone's Sorry Nowadays [+lire aussi :
bande-annonce
fiche film], directed by Frederike Migom, is part of the Generation K+ selection at this year’s Berlinale. Migom’s previous feature-length work, Binti [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
fiche film] (2019), was featured at Sundance and the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, among others. This film, also written by Migom, is a screen adaptation of Bart Moeyaert’s book Tegenwoordig heet iedereen Sorry, which has been translated into a range of languages, such as French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Swedish, Turkish, Bulgarian, Croatian and Estonian.

The story follows Bianca (Lisa Vanhemelrijck), a 13-year-old in search of attention within a broken family, while trying to navigate all of the contrasting feelings that are typical of her age. Her little brother Alan (Lewis Hannes), who suffers from a heart condition, is also getting all the attention from her mum (Laurence Roothooft).

On a hot summer’s day, things escalate as Billie King (Sachli Gholamalizad), Bianca’s favourite actress from a popular soap opera, shows up at their house and brings a breath of fresh air. With her son Jazz and another child on the way with her wife, Malika, she offers the teenager a new outlook on life that will leave her a changed person by the end of the day.

Everyone's Sorry Nowadays is a slow builder, where the second half of the movie is by far superior to the first. We finally get to love (as well as despise) and understand the characters and their behaviour, and the sequences put together by Migom become more and more interesting over time as they start taking more risks. The soft cinematography courtesy of Esmoreit Lutters also helps create a very intimate and cosy look, while also maintaining an interesting contrast with the conflictual relationship between Bianca and her mum. The bright and summery tone feels broken from time to time by the tensions bubbling up within the family.

Despite some overly cheesy choices (which involve both the screenplay and the general development of the story), Migom’s new effort has a smart way of sustaining the pace by adding Bianca’s version of certain scenes, built as a sort of parallel story. This layered approach allows the audience to step inside the girl’s mind, and the effect is strengthened by Vanhemelrijck’s impressive screen debut and some bold visual choices that, nevertheless, feel scattered and lacking in overall consistency.

In fact, Migom’s film never manages to shake off a nagging sense of “what if?” – what if the feature had had more courage to take the story and narrative to the next level, and had taken bolder narrative risks in order to become something truly fresh? Unfortunately, the approach to this teenage girl who feels neglected by her mum and who, at the same time, has the sense that she has been abandoned for a younger woman, seems a tad too stereotypical. If viewers can see past this, however, they will still find a film that is sincere at heart and honest in its simplicity.

Everyone’s Sorry Nowadays was produced by Belgium’s deMENSEN, with Germany’s Cala Film and the Netherlands’ Juliet at Pupkin serving as co-producers. Its international sales are handled by LevelK.