Deadly Maria

A German film set in one block of flats. Maria is in her forties. She was born in that flat and has never left it. She looks after her father. He is paralysed, in bed, and always wanting something. Her husband Heinz works at an insurance company. He comes home in the evening, wants his dinner, and does not talk. Maria's day is set. Cleaning, cooking, medicine, washing. The same order every day. From there the film shows the routine. The narrative speeds nothing up. One day someone moves in upstairs. Dieter is a young man. He plays music and makes noise. Maria talks to him. He shows her a film. Then a record. Then a book. She is seeing them for the first time. The narrative gives flashbacks. Maria's childhood; her mother's death, her father's rules, and a school she never attended. What the narrative is interested in is not a house but a prison: its idea is that nobody is holding her by force; the door is open and she does not go out. Dieter calls her out. Maria decides to do something. The last section is hard. The narrative prepares it and it is still sudden. The title says so from the start. The form is strange. There are speeded-up transitions between scenes, the angles are skewed, and the camera sometimes looks down from the ceiling. The sound design enlarges ordinary objects. A tap, a clock, a spoon, a door. This is Tom Tykwer's first feature. The sense of tempo in his later films is not here yet; this one is almost entirely slow. Nina Petri carries the part with barely a word. Nina Petri, Josef Bierbichler, Peter Franke and Joachim Król are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes German independent cinema and formal experiment. Who it is not for: anyone expecting incident; the first hour is entirely repetition and that is a deliberate choice.