In the character play “Luise”, the German director Matthias Luthardt fans out a character study. Inspiration is a story from 1922.
Luise Aschenbrenner plays the eponymous “Luise” Photo: Salzgeber
Luise (Luise Aschenbrenner) has settled into her solitude. After the death of her mother, she works the remote farm in Alsace without outside help. She takes care of the cattle and takes care of the adjacent garden. A lonely idyll is the place where the drama by director Matthias Luthardt (“Pingpong”) unfolds, but not.
Because life in the barren farmhouse is full of privation, all the more so because of the raging war. The year is 1918, and things in the German town – at least according to the official borderline – near the French border are at a standstill. This is probably one of the reasons why Luise’s mother has not yet been buried, but is laid out in her parents’ marriage bed.
Image designer Lotta Kilian (“Nothing that happens to us”) sketches the bleak world of the twenty-something woman with just a few shots: the scratchy linen shirt that she puts on at dawn as a symbol of her strict work ethic. The cross she always hangs around her neck for her no less firm faith.
provide shelter
It is an existence cut off from the world and its turmoil. However, they penetrate her, first in the person of Hélène (Christa Theret). She’s French, actually an enemy. Luise doesn’t care and gives her shelter. As an Alsatian and the child of a German father and a French father, she has always been somewhere in between.
“Luise”. Directed by Matthias Luthardt. With Luise Aschenbrenner, Christa Theret and others France/Germany 2023, 95 min.
At the latest when another uninvited guest arrives, she finds out that such an “in between” is not tolerated, especially in times of war: Hélène is followed by Hermann (Leonard Kunz), literally: The German soldier pursued the Frenchwoman because she killed his superior, after he had sexually imposed himself on her.
He actually wants to bring her back to his unit so as not to be considered deserter. The gaping wound on his thigh prevents him. Luise takes care of her and takes him in with the same equanimity as Hélène had just before. She even hides him from the captain (Aleksandar Jovanovi) when he is looking for him.
Desire in the mirror of the other
Luise’s in-between realm is gone and the basis laid for an intensive chamber play that – as the choice of title makes clear – first of all wants to be a character study. What “Luise” actually manages to do is to emphatically illustrate that the mirror of the other is needed for the development of the self, one’s wishes and desires.
Only when she shares her destiny with her two peers does the young woman begin to think about what she actually wants from her life. The screenplay, written by Sebastian Bleyl (“Arthur’s Law”) in cooperation with director Luthardt, contrasts its protagonist with two overly stereotypical pairs of opposites.
Hermann, who condemns the abusive behavior of his superior and surprises for a soldier of his time by his willingness to reflect, is God-fearing, patriotic and family-oriented. He embodies the prevailing order and thus what Luise is familiar with.
Self-determined life in Holland
Hélène, on the other hand, represents his challenge. She has a penchant for higher education and strives for a self-determined life, trying to make her way to Holland because she harbors the hope of being able to be free with a woman there.
Both approach Luise, wanting to win her over. Nevertheless, the film fails to work out the reasons for this and instead focuses solely on the inner conflict of the eponymous heroine. However, the necessary introspection to make the nuances of the nuances comprehensible to the audience is also omitted.
Luise is only allowed to feel what she is more attracted to from the outside – in addition to rather clichéd dialogues, above all in the form of nocturnal encounters. This is where the literary template is most clearly recognizable: the scriptwriters used the story “Der Fuchs” by D. H. Lawrence als lose Inspiration.
interpersonal dynamics
The British author, whose work was heavily criticized by his contemporaries for its erotic drasticness, showed particular interest in the importance of the sexual in the exploration of interpersonal dynamics. “Luise” also noticeably relies on the radiance of an amour fou, embedded in an extraordinary historical background.
However, without going beyond the mere suggestion of intimacy between Luise and Hélène or Luise and Hermann. Ironically, the film itself remains in a strange “in between” from which at least its protagonist will free herself in the end.
Unlike the aforementioned novella and its first film adaptation by Mark Rydell (“The Fox”, 1967), “Luise” does not culminate in a symbolic victory of the archaic masculine. However, due to random turns in a hectic finale, both the potential of the special constellation of figures and the previously carefully created dense atmosphere remain unused – and Luise is an almost unknown person.
2023-09-01 15:08:15
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