Good feelings and stories with happy endings are always appreciated. Especially at Christmas time. And although Das Glück ist ein Vogerl does not stand out for special insights or directorial virtuosity, it works above all because of the excellent performances of the entire cast.
Divided into three episodes, Antares is a complex and layered fresco of contemporary society. Three stories, three different lifestyles, one setting. Antares does not only tell us about impossible loves, desperate loves, tormented loves and secret love affairs. Antares stages Love as utopia, a constant, desperate need for love that often also leads to a deep sense of loneliness.
With an essential mise-en-scène with clear references to poetic realism and where blue and red tones prevail, director Tim Oppermann contributes to the alienating effect of Frisch.
Disenchanted, rational and appropriately satirical – with even a touch of subtle irony – Lourdes, by pointing the finger at a hypocritical and “respectable” society that lives only on illusions, shows us a very different reality from the one we imagine.
Fully following the canons of the mainstream television film that we all too often come across in German productions, North Face, co-produced by Germany, Austria and Switzerland and directed by German director Philipp Stölzl, doesn’t know how to exploit its opportunities (first and foremost, the climb undertaken by the four protagonists), making the whole thing excessively flat and rhythmless.