Defective copy

Actually Karo (Claudia Eisinger) always thought she was a normal young woman. Well, she has mood swings and has uncontrollable tantrums every now and then. But don't we all have them? But when she loses her job and even her best friend Anna (Laura Tonke) distances herself from her, Karo realizes that something is wrong. A therapy is supposed to help. But unfortunately, in her efforts to be the perfect patient, she does everything wrong and thus slithers inexorably towards a deep depression. When she also loses her boyfriend and is harassed by constant panic attacks, she begins to realize that she herself is the problem. But that doesn't get her any closer to a solution.

With her feature debut, Mängelexemplar, Laura Lackmann ventures into a very difficult subject. Her film adaptation of Sarah Kuttner's bestselling novel of the same name attempts to approach the subject of depression in a playful and humorous, yet authentic way. The problem is not that she didn't succeed, but rather that she succeeded a little too well. The way Claudia Eisinger portrays the extreme mood swings, but also the extremely destructive egoism that comes with the illness, is simply magnificent. The result, however, is that Karo inevitably comes across as not really sympathetic to the viewer, but extremely exhausting. Watching her get more and more lost in her depression and threaten to break herself and the world around her is really not a pleasure, despite some very nice and also amusing moments.

The fact that Karo isn't the only dysfunctional person in the film doesn't make things any easier. There are hardly any real sympathetic characters - apart from her grandma - that you as a viewer enjoy spending time with. At the beginning, the whole thing comes across as refreshingly humorous and biting. That's when the movie is really fun and lets you hope for an entertaining comedy with a lot of rough edges, where you'll gladly put up with the broken or unsympathetic characters. But - and that's what comes with the disease we're dealing with here - as the symptoms progress, the humor gives way more and more to depressing drama in the truest sense of the word. And that, unfortunately, is very, very exhausting.

From a purely acting standpoint, Mängelexemplar is truly fascinating. Claudia Eisinger plays the role extremely well and extremely authentically. Anyone who knows someone who is manic-depressive will recognize a lot of that in her intense acting. If you judge the movie only by that and also just want to see very good acting cinema, you shouldn't miss this movie. However, if you're hoping for a thoroughly entertaining, relaxed visit to the cinema, especially after the rather amusing beginning, you'll be put to a hard test of patience after the first 45 minutes at the latest. Therefore: Only worth seeing for viewers who want to deal with the heavy topic of depression in an excellently acted and authentically realized way, absolutely worth seeing. For all others, who want to spend an enjoyable cinema evening, rather not suitable!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp