"Im Winter ein Jahr" is a recent film by Caroline Link, the Academy Award winning filmmaker of "Nirgendwo in Afrika". It's based on Scott Campbell's novel. Bierbichler and Herfurth got lots of acclaim and awards recognition for their performances here and same can be said about Niki Reiser, who produced the score and Link herself. Reiser already won 5 German Film Awards for his music work, some of them for other Link projects.
The story can be summarized quickly. A woman comes to an artist and orders a portrait of her daughter and her late son. The artist gets deeper and deeper in the family history as he has his painting sessions with the young woman. All the characters are pretty interesting. Herfurth's character is very straight-forward, but also very fragile and clingy when she makes a connection with somebody. During her breakup scene I was worried she might hurt herself as well, just like brother did. Then the mother has her own struggles. Obviously she had much more of a connection to her son than to her daughter and she tries her best to keep up the fake idyllic world scenario. One example would be when she lies to the artist about the reason of the son's death. The father is a successful, overly ambitious scientist who struggles with interpersonal relationships, however. It's not free of flaws. For example I was not entirely convinced about how quickly he was captivated by the family's secrets and history and got totally involved, even with his own history of lack of personal relationships. Also the dancing sequence which was supposed to work as the female main character's big moment of freeing herself of her boundaries and finding happiness did not entirely work for me. On the other hand, the last shot with the final quote was very well done. It also shows us that Herfurth's character is the center of the story and not Bierbichler's.
"Im Winter ein Jahr" was honored as the second best movie of the year behind "John Rabe". It's certainly not my no°2 of the year, but I agree that it is a pretty decent work and all in all I'd recommend it. It's especially worth a watch for Herfurth's performance who proved herself as one of the most attractive and talented young German actresses once again.
The story can be summarized quickly. A woman comes to an artist and orders a portrait of her daughter and her late son. The artist gets deeper and deeper in the family history as he has his painting sessions with the young woman. All the characters are pretty interesting. Herfurth's character is very straight-forward, but also very fragile and clingy when she makes a connection with somebody. During her breakup scene I was worried she might hurt herself as well, just like brother did. Then the mother has her own struggles. Obviously she had much more of a connection to her son than to her daughter and she tries her best to keep up the fake idyllic world scenario. One example would be when she lies to the artist about the reason of the son's death. The father is a successful, overly ambitious scientist who struggles with interpersonal relationships, however. It's not free of flaws. For example I was not entirely convinced about how quickly he was captivated by the family's secrets and history and got totally involved, even with his own history of lack of personal relationships. Also the dancing sequence which was supposed to work as the female main character's big moment of freeing herself of her boundaries and finding happiness did not entirely work for me. On the other hand, the last shot with the final quote was very well done. It also shows us that Herfurth's character is the center of the story and not Bierbichler's.
"Im Winter ein Jahr" was honored as the second best movie of the year behind "John Rabe". It's certainly not my no°2 of the year, but I agree that it is a pretty decent work and all in all I'd recommend it. It's especially worth a watch for Herfurth's performance who proved herself as one of the most attractive and talented young German actresses once again.