The slow and stately rhythms of Angela Schanelec’s cinema have not changed over 20 years and ten feature films, however, as our world has grown twitchier, they have acquired an extra defiance. Long takes and static formal frames compel us to stand down stimulation-seeking tendencies. This isn’t to say her films are boring, there are mysterious rewards for sitting with them, and the rare sensation (evocative of the dear departed Frederick Wiseman) that the human behaviors on show result from a filmmaker striving for the fewest possible manipulations.
Following her hypnotic and unrecognizable retelling of the story of Oedipus, “Music” — which won the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay in 2023 — Schanelec returns to the Berlinale competition with another elliptical dream of a movie.
“My Wife Cries” is a marriage story, and like the Noah Baumbach version, we meet the couple as they are coming unstitched from each other. Thomas (Vladimir Vulevic…
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source m.imdb.com ’
ADVERTISEMENT
