Elisabeth Trissenaar Movies

Adapted from the novel of celebrated German writer Ingrid Noll, Kalt ist der Abendhauch bounces back and forth over a span of 50 years to tell the darkly comic tale of a destructive love affair between two people. When the film opens, octogenarian Charlotte (Gisela Trowe) has just received a letter from Hugo (Heinz Bennent), an old friend who is coming for a visit. The news of Hugo's impending arrival takes Charlotte back to the year 1936, when she was 16. One of four children born to middle-class parents, young Charlotte (Fritzi Haberlandt) carries a torch for handsome stud Hugo (August Diehl), and is understandably put out when he marries her older sister Ida (Georgia Stahl). An even deeper pall is cast over the couple's union when Charlotte's brother shows up at the wedding dinner wearing a dress, then proceeds to hang himself in the attic. A few years later, Charlotte enters into an unsatisfying marriage with Bernhard (Andre Hennicke), a dull schoolteacher with whom she has two children. Bernhard disappears during the course of World War II and is presumed dead, making it easy for Charlotte to consummate her long-simmering lust with Hugo when he drops by one day after the war. However, on a proverbial dark and stormy night, Bernhard reappears at Charlotte's doorstep, wet, unkempt, and hungry for sex. Hugo's arrival fifty years later exposes -- literally -- five decades of family secrets and dysfunction, thanks in part to the gruesome discovery of a body buried in the cellar. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, Rovi

The characters in this German romantic comedy that follows a 30-year old single woman searching for love, have a distinctly Felliniesque quality to them. Fanny Fink desperately wants a man. Her closest male friend is Orfeo, a gay con-man who claims to be a self-taught African witch doctor. For a price, Orfeo agrees to conjure up Fanny's dream lover. What she gets is the creepy building supervisor Lothar. Meanwhile, Lothar, who believes he is about to be killed and abducted by aliens, suddenly disappears taking Fanny's money with him. Fanny learns an valuable lesson and eventually finds her man, a man who has been there all along. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In this drama, Franza (Elisabeth Trissenaar) leads an unhappy life after she has an affair with a British officer at the end of World War II. She marries an abusive and unfeeling doctor (Armin Mueller-Stahl) and the emotional strain of her marriage leaves her depressed and dispirited. Her brother Martin (Gabriel Barilly) tries to come to her aid and meets her in Cairo where she slowly tells him about her unfortunate past. In the meantime, her trials and tribulations do not appear to be heading toward an easy resolution. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Director Hans Neuenfels adapted this rather theatrical version of a 1920s play by Robert Musil on the angst of reaching 40+, introducing emotional components that Musil himself preferred to avoid -- but that might satisfy today's audiences. Five protagonists gather together at a Berlin villa one February morning and in the space of 24 hours discuss, argue, and otherwise verbalize their views on life, on alienation (in the 1920s!), and on topics that will be universal for all future generations, such as relationships and the nature of reality. Individual viewers will have to decide if the theatrical approach of Neuenfels works for them or not.
~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Based on a non-fiction bestseller of the same name by Rolf Hochhuth, Eine Liebe In Deutschland is about a tragic and forbidden love affair between Stanislaw, a Polish POW (Piotr Lysak) and Paulina (Hanna Schygulla) a fruit-and-vegetable vendor in a small town in Germany along the border with Switzerland. Their affair would have gone undetected except for the busybody women of the village, and when Stanislaw is picked up by a German stormtrooper (Armin Müller-Stahl) and brought in for a mock trial, he is given a chance to prove his racial purity and so perhaps escape execution. As for Paulina, she is ostracized by the villagers and imprisoned for consorting with someone who was not of the same high Aryan caste as herself. Depressing, yet politically relevant to Poland of the early 1980s, this film by acclaimed director Andrzej Wajda) is an effective and emotional statement on the nature of oppression. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

A strange and some might say warped, erotic drama from director Robert Van Ackeren, Die Reinheit des Herzens is a nearly abstract look at the changes in one woman's inner self. Lisa (Elisabeth Trissenaar) is married to a down-and-out writer who one day forces her into a liaison with a book thief. Lisa works in a bookstore and caught the thief stealing. The result was the unwanted erotic relationship that eventually changes the way Lisa looks at herself and her family. As her husband goes from bad to worse, she starts to reconsider her affair, yet in the end, her husband's alienation and her own responses to her life are nothing the normal family would want to emulate. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

In a true story beginning in the year before the outbreak of WW II in France, Charlotte (Birgit Doll), a young woman sent to the safety of her grandfathers in the south of France by her Jewish family in Germany, starts to paint pictures that recall some of the terrors she has already known in Germany before leaving. The movie slips back and forth between the memories her paintings conjure up, and her life in France. At first, back in Germany, Charlotte was convinced that her own optimistic, romantic outlook would save her from all harm. But then that self-deception fades a little as her father, a doctor, is picked up by the Gestapo. Even though her father's release is finally secured by Charlotte's step-mother (an opera singer), the situation steadily deteriorates until her parents send her away in the hope that she will be better off in France. Once there, the harsh reality intrudes so much on her life that not even her paintings can afford her any solace. Her despair becomes stronger as the Nazi atrocities begin to multiply, affording her little real hope of survival. An epilogue to the movie tells the audience the fate of the real Charlotte, since the movie ends before that time. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Completely subordinated to her gross husband, Irma nonetheless invites her girlfriend to come and live with her family for an extended stay. The girlfriend begins to copy her slavish manner and mannerisms to such good effect that the husband cannot distinguish between them. At the same time, the wife has grown stranger and stranger, though taking on the appearance of the girlfriend. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

This drama is set in Bavaria prior to Hitler's rise to power and chronicles the many affairs of a stationmaster's bored wife. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi