EVERYONE ELSE

“I wanted to make a film about a young love, and find out something about modern relationships, where the roles are not defined anymore.” Writer/director Maren Ade’s account of a romantic sexual relationship teetering on the brink of social conformity is contemporary, funny and unnervingly close to the bone. Young architect Chris and his band publicist girlfriend Gitti (a superb, award-winning performance from Birgit Minichmayr) are basking in the sun at his parent’s Sardinian retreat, reveling in the freedom of not being ‘like everyone else’. An encounter with a couple who robustly embody more traditional gender roles sets off a crisis: is Chris’s refusal of professional compromise unmanly? Is the rebellious Gitti inappropriately unsupportive of her man? Ade was born in 1976. Her shrewd portrait of her generation’s hunger for originality is itself a consummately original work.