The Forest for the Trees

Melanie is a young teacher from a small town starting at a new school in a large city. The pupils do not listen to her, her colleagues keep their distance, and she tries far too hard to be liked by everyone. She attempts a friendship with her neighbour Tina, and the attempt becomes steadily more uncomfortable. Melanie does nothing wrong; she simply misreads every boundary. Maren Ade writes and directs in her first film. Eva Löbau plays Melanie. The method is to make the viewer uncomfortable. The scenes are held just above the threshold of embarrassment and the camera does not cut; the audience squirms on the character's behalf. Ade later became known for Toni Erdmann, where the same method is at work: long social scenes, a fixed frame, and no music. The subject is not loneliness but the effort to be accepted. Melanie keeps giving things in order to be liked, and everything she gives makes it worse. It was made on a very low budget with a digital camera as a film school graduation project. It won an award at Sundance and was taken as the announcement of a new generation in German cinema. The ending is abrupt and steps outside realism, which is the most argued over thing in the film. Who it is for: viewers who like uncomfortable social realism and the cinema of Maren Ade. Who it is not for: it is embarrassing to watch, the pace is slow, and it is hard to identify with the character.