Screenings
- Stenen Hoofd – Amsterdam
Baden Baden
- long
- 96'
- English subtitles
The most momentous event in this pleasantly meandering comedy drama is the renovation of a bathroom. So this film is not about big events, but rather about small gestures and the difference they can make to someone’s life.
It says a lot about Rachel Lang’s film that a bathroom renovation can offer a dramatic climax. But it’s even more telling about protagonist Ana, a tomboy who leads a decidedly ‘unmonumental’ life.
It all starts when she loses her at least somewhat interesting part-time job as a driver for a movie production. When she’s an hour late delivering the lead actress to the set, she’s politely asked to leave. If she could just return the highly expensive rental Porsche first.
Why wouldn’t you eat carrots and peas with ketchup? Why wouldn’t you date your ex again? Why wouldn’t a woman be able to install a shower?
The car never makes it there: in a rebellious moment Ana races it back to Strasbourg (which is the birthplace of director Rachel Lang, incidentally). There she tries to give her life a new direction. Ana is a rebel in disguise, a seemingly quiet young woman who rebels against all kinds of small and big ideas. The idea that you shouldn’t eat carrots and peas with ketchup. The stigma that you shouldn’t date your ex. The cliché that a woman is not able to install a shower.
These are all things that Ana does once she’s back in Strasbourg, and they are more important than you might think. Because Ana is in fact actively shaping her life and finding her identity. In an especially wild moment she drives fifty kilometres too fast on the highway (and they already drive so fast in Germany!) while she sings along with the radio: “I am through with my Moulinex, I am unisex!”
Hugo Emmerzael (translation by Marjan Westbroek)
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