Barbara Auer Movies
- 2009
Theodor Fontane's seminal, tragic 1894 novel Effi Briest received numerous screen adaptations up through the early 21st century, including (most prominently) a 1974 feature from Rainer Werner Fassbinder that emerged as one of the hallmarks of the New German Cinema. The 2009 version emerged at the hands of director Hermine Huntgeburth, and stars Julia Jentsch as Effi von Briest, a Prussian adolescent swept up in the throes of high society during the late 19th century. At the outset of the tale, Effi's mother, Luise (Juliane Koehler) sets her up with a romantic suitor decades older than she, Baron von Instetten (Sebastian Koch), with whom Luise herself has a history of romantic involvement. In truth, Effi passionately loves her cousin Dagobert (Mirko Lang), and has promised to dance with him, but she bows to social conventions by dancing instead with the Baron, and before long the nobleman gamely asks for her hand in marriage, which she obliges - again, solely out of respect for societal norms. They move to a port village together and Effi falls into a miserably unhappy lifestyle - until she experiences physical satisfaction via an affair with a handsome militaryman, Major Crampass (Misel Maticevic). Alas, their limited relationship ultimately leaves Effi with even greater feelings of emptiness. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Julia Jentsch, Sebastian Koch, (more)
- 2008
A vulnerable doctor discovers that fate can push you in a new direction at the drop of a hat when he succumbs to the advances of a strong, self-assured woman in this soul-searching drama from cinematographer-turned-director Jan Fehse. Dr. Fricke has grown accustomed to caring for others; his patients at the hospital are constantly crying out for help, and his daughter back home is suffering through a grueling terminal illness. Meanwhile, a woman named Sarah has just dumped her coke-addicted in a desperate attempt to pull her life together. Falling in love with Ben, Sarah believes senses a real chance to get a fresh start. But for all of loves brightness, it can also burn. When the married Dr. Fricke senses an opportunity to relinquish his all-consuming role of caretaker in both his personal and professional lives, he grabs hold without considering that the consequences could scald him in ways he never anticipated. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sebastian Koch, Mina Tander, (more)
A young businesswoman gets in touch with her taste for cutthroat corporate tactics by slowly seducing her inner demons in The State I Am In writer/director Christian Petzold's free-flowing dramatic thriller. Immediately accosted by her ex-husband, Ben (Hinnerk Schönemann), upon returning to her hometown of Wittenberg, Yella Fichte (Nina Hoss) blows her former spouse off before informing her father that she has landed a lucrative accounting position in Hanover. When Ben subsequently offers Yella a ride to the airport, she reluctantly accepts but immediately realizes her mistake when he lashes out at her in an angry tirade before driving the car into the River Elbe. Just barely managing to escape from the car before her lungs fill with water, Yella swims to the shore and catches the first train to Hanover. As it turns out, Yella's new boss (Michael Wittenborn) has just been fired, yet after rejecting his thinly veiled advances the job-seeking woman seems to experience a stroke of luck when she makes the acquaintance of roving venture capitalist Philipp (Devid Striesow). Later, after Yella accompanies cold and calculating businessman Philipp to an important meeting, the relationship between the pair quickly turns personal. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nina Hoss, Devid Striesow, (more)
- 2006
Volker Einrauch's The Other Boy concerns two teenage boys who, due to the very different demeanors, often clash. When an unforeseen shock from the world affects them each, they discover their differences might actually make them good friends. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Andrea Sawatzki, Barbara Auer, (more)
- 2006
Deadly secrets begin to seethe when the irresistable allure of a mysterious woman in red draws a weak-willed architect into a fateful one-night stand in director Margarethe von Trotta's entry into the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Armin Mueller-Stahl, Katja Riemann, (more)
- 2004
A young boy immersed in a fantasy world of his own crosses paths with a real-live talking terrier -- who just happens to be the inheritor of a palatial estate -- in this family-oriented fantasy from Mostly Martha director Sandra Nettelbeck. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Neil Lennart Thomas
- 2000
In many ways the German equivalent of Running on Empty, Die Innere Sicherheit takes a dramatic look at the difficulties faced by the child of fugitives. Teenaged Jeanne (Julia Hummer) has lived in hiding all her life as the daughter of ex-terrorists. Her family lives in Portugal and plans to permanently leave Europe for Brazil, but when their money is burgled, Jeanne and her parents must return to Germany with hopes of acquiring some cash from their past associates. They find shelter in an abandoned house with the help of Heinrich (Bilge Bingul), a young man with whom Jeanne discovers a mutual attraction. As her parents struggle to gather funding from their old friends, who are now respectable society members eager to disavow their past activities, Jeanne begins to crave a more normal life -- complete with people, cool clothes, and a boyfriend. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Julia Hummer, Barbara Auer, (more)
- 1998
A burnt-out Berlin cop investigating his 652nd case slowly loses the ability to discern the differences between the grim realities of the job and a decaying personal life as his mental instability grows progressively worse. His latest case is particularly nasty and puzzling, but Detective Bernie Kominka (Gotz George) finds himself strangely pleased, for it distracts him from his tumultuous home life wherein his wife grows fussy and distant, and his nearly lunatic son proclaims his undying hatred for him. The mystery involves the apparently sexually-motivated mutilation, beating death, and robbery of a young man. During his initial investigation of the crime scene, Kominka notes a yellow umbrella that is surreptitiously picked up by a young woman. While vainly searching for clues, Kominka's marriage finally crumbles, but not before he is suspended by his boss/brother-in-law Hecht (Christian Redl) during a heated argument. With no work and no family, Kominka, who seems to be teetering on the brink of a breakdown without realizing it himself, starts looking for the woman and the missing umbrella. During his search, he learns that the victim's ex-wife has become a suspect and that the deceased had been selling his son to pedophiles. Kominka finds the woman, Anna Weller (Corinna Harfouch) soon enough. A recent divorcée, she is as vulnerable and fragile as he is. Without identifying himself as a cop, Kominka picks Anna up at a singles bar and the two embark upon a decidedly sexual and unhealthy relationship that only worsens the situation. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Götz George, Corinna Harfouch, (more)
- 1997
In this grim German drama, a troubled 14-year-old boy's pent-up rage and frustration leads him to involvement with a bad crowd and gets him caught up in an inescapable spiral of increasingly self-destructive and deadly violence. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1993
Spain, having suffered a civil war in the 1930s, was a neutral country during World War II. Generalissimo Francisco Franco (Juan Echanove) was the sole ruler of what was then deliberately fashioned into a puritanical society. In this satire, the hypocrisy of Madrid society in that period is scathingly portrayed. Those familiar with the period first-hand are likeliest to understand the story's allusions and symbolism. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- José M. Sacristán, Juan Echanove, (more)
- 1992
As controversial films go, this is a rather easygoing examination of the excesses practiced and believed in by the devoutly religious. Few of the issues raised are likely to electrify anyone not brought up as a Roman Catholic. In the story, a tourist bus is carrying a crowd of pilgrims (whose devotion to the faith varies widely) to the shrine to the Virgin at Lourdes. Among the passengers is a very old-guard and very formidable old dame, who likely thinks that Vatican II was a big mistake and insists on celibacy and that sort of old-fashioned thing. Another passenger is a priest traveling with his pregnant girlfriend, who has his doubts about the whole institution, regarding its beliefs generally as a variably benign superstition. As the story develops, the intolerant grow more so, and the tolerant prove to be generally from the ultra-liberal camp, and the main item on the table for discussion proves to be celibacy. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Barbara Auer, Christiane Horbiger, (more)
- 1992
In the aftermath of two doctors' divorce, their daughter lives with her mother in Berlin. Her Greek father is not happy with the decision of the courts about his daughter, so he kidnaps her and takes her back to Greece with him. Her mother seeks redress through the international legal system but also finds no satisfaction, so she hires someone to kidnap her back. What the young lady thinks about her two chain-smoking, feuding parents is not deeply explored, but their custody battle leads them back into each other's arms (if only temporarily). ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Barbara Auer, Georges Corraface, (more)
- 1992
- R
Peter Keller has come back to his native village in Switzerland from Berlin to investigate a murder. It seems that an old army buddy of his is the accused. As he pokes around, it becomes clear that his having roots there cuts no ice with the locals: they all seem to have something to hide and resent his presence on the scene. Among the tensions seething beneath the placid surface of the place is the resentment a religious commune has provoked locally, and schemes which are designed to take their land away from them. This drama about a particularly tenacious and methodical investigation is based on a novel by mystery writer Sam Juan. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bruno Ganz, Barbara Auer, (more)
- 1991
Maca Daracs (Barbara Auer) is a gypsy woman working in Austria, and she has a problem: she doesn't have any legal right to be working there. Furthermore, the police have already tagged her as someone to check up on really soon. If she can't come up with a husband to make it possible for her to stay, she can kiss her "good life" in Austria goodbye. For her, the long hours she spends working in a resort kitchen and the cot she has in a tiny room (and even the effort she must exert to fend of the unwelcome attentions of a hotel manager) are all infinitely better than what she has waiting for her where she came from. Suffice it to say, she's motivated. In this comedy, due to time constraints, she has basically two choices of mates: a paranoid semi-retired arms dealer, and a wealthy and socially prominent politician. Naturally, she hits on the politician first, but he admits that, while he finds her sexually alluring, he's not about to marry her. She tries to woo the nutso arms dealer next, but he soon appears to go genuinely off his rocker, and she's forced to seek him out at a nearby asylum. There, he proves his sanity by choosing to wed her instead of one of the formidable (and undoubtedly mustachioed) asylum matrons. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Barbara Auer, Nikolaus Paryla, (more)
- 1990
- R
In this technically outstanding made-for-television police drama, a pair of feuding policemen only have their mutual disagreements to keep them going, because their careers are going nowhere. Then they stop in at a run-down restaurant and discover indications of a widespread protection racket. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Barbara Auer, Jacques Breuer, (more)
- 1990
Friedrich (Uwe Bohm) manages to escape from East Germany to the West in the 1950s. On his arrival, he is greeted with the words Herzlich Willkommen, or "cordial, heartfelt welcome." However, once he finds employment, what he experiences is anything but a cordial welcome at his new job, where he is a teacher/counselor for "wayward children" located in a former castle. The institution is headed by a former Nazi who runs it with the help of the more criminal, bullying boys. Despite these obstacles, Friedrich manages to establish a rapport with a boy who wants to go "straight," and also begins to have an affair with an attractive female teacher at the school. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Uwe Bohm, Barbara Auer, (more)
- 1990
This made-for-television movie focuses on the exploits of a late-middle-aged woman who has always been an activist in some movement or other. Perhaps at one time her husband participated in the activism with her, but he evidently lost interest sometime around the beginning the women's movement and the "rebirthing" movement began to hold sway, and he now wryly only observes his wife's constant activity. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Barbara Auer, Thomas Heinze, (more)
- 1989
Hermann (Peter Cieslinski) was traumatized by the war and its violence, and in 1946 he is released from a hospital to work at a small rural railway station. There he slowly emerges from his dazed condition and takes notice of the world around him, including a woman named Marie (Barbara Auer), whom he falls in love with. He also gets caught up in a scheme to steal U.S. aid shipments and sell them on the black market. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Peter Cieslinski, Barbara Auer, (more)
- 1988
Felix is a four-headed look at a one-headed male chauvinist. Ulrich Tukur plays Felix, an unreconstructed "love 'em and leave 'em" type who feels persecuted when women demand that he make a commitment. Felix's escapades are depicted in four separate sequences, each handled by a top female writer/director. The four creative spirits behind Felix are Christel Buschmann, Helke Sander, Helma Sanders-Brahms and Margherita von Trotta. Felix makes no attempt to hide its feminist bias, which only adds to the overall enjoyment of this prickly German comedy. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ulrich Tukur, Eva Mattes, (more)
- 1983
In this intellectual perspective of what emotion is and does, director Alexander Kluge has divided the topic into 12 parts with titles such as "The Change," "Act Five" or "The Shot" and then proceeded to formulate a film treatise that does not exclude political figures or activities in West Germany in the early 1980s. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Hannelore Hoger, Alexandra Kluge, (more)
