Sehnsucht (Longing)


Valeska Grisebach
,
DE
,
2005
,
35mm
,
colour
,
85'

At the heart of this slender, yet meticulously observed slice of life portrait, is the seemingly ideal marriage of metalworker and volunteer firefighter, Markus and his wife, Ella, a chorus singer. When Markus travels with his colleagues, he succumbs, in the haze of intoxication and youthful nostalgia, to the shy attention of a waitress named Rose. As he returns home to Ella and to the familiar routine of his bucolic and uneventful life, the emotional repercussions of his brief affair prove to be an inescapable reality that he must confront to preserve the integrity of their mutual intimacy… Sehnsucht is a distilled, yet thoughtful and sensitively rendered tale of intimacy, betrayal, and elusive nature of desire. (Acquarello)

“Aside from the concrete, visible life one leads, I've always been moved by the number of other lives that exist only in one's imagination: If one were in another place, or had met another person, made a different decision, or were daring enough... For me ”longing“ is a very personal feeling: a wild power that can say a lot about a person, but which can also contain a bittersweet hint of farewell, of something forsaken. Sometimes this one life is too small. In the course of my research interviews for the film, I got the impression that love affairs often become a stage for longing. Here, wishes are to come true, exciting things are supposed to happen, things that make you alive. Here, you become a dramatic figure, you reveal your face. The man in this story is an exalted, romantic figure; in the oldfashioned sense: almost a man of honor. A man who tries to do everything right, to assume responsibility—and who fails. There is no protection.” (Valeska Grisebach)