Omamamia

Grandma (Marianne Sägebrecht) has hit rock bottom in her emotions. Not only has her daughter Marie (Annette Frier) taken her out of the house they share in the remote idyll of Canada after the death of her beloved Loisls, to put her in a nursing home. Marie also cancels her promised trip to Rome for a papal audience at short notice. This is too much for Grandma, as she absolutely has to see the Pope to confess a sin of her youth and thereby finally find peace. So, without further ado, she sets off on her own to Rome to get the papal blessing. She finds accommodation with her niece Martina (Miriam Stein), who supposedly works there as an au pair for a Catholic family. Grandma is astonished when she discovers that her well-behaved niece is living in a desolate apartment with a rock musician (Raz Degan) and earning her bread in a bar. But neither this, nor the announcement that Marie, who suffers from extreme fear of flying, wants to follow her mother to Rome, stops her from her plan. It is only when she meets the cunning Lorenzo (Giancarlo Gianni) that her plans are thrown into disarray. Not only does her meeting with the Holy Father at Lorenzo's hands end in outright scandal. Grandma also ends up in prison - but that's just the beginning of her exciting odyssey to the Vatican, which shows her that life can start all over again, even in old age.

The cinema has discovered the 50+ generation for itself in recent years and is now increasingly bringing films about aging into the cinemas. Some filmmakers approach the subject more dramatically, such as Michael Haneke in Love, while others focus more on the comedic potential that the pitfalls of age and the differences between generations so bring. Omamamia by Tomy Wigand falls somewhere in between. To be sure, the humorous moments dominate. But the initial situation of the story alone offers little reason for laughter: the husband has died, the bossy daughter sells the beloved house and wants to send grandma to an old people's home without first fulfilling her big wish of a trip to Rome. The fact that the film nevertheless manages to develop a comedic lightness out of this basic situation can definitely be credited to the director and his leading actress Marianne Sägebrecht.

The problem, however, is that despite some good moments, which are particularly to the credit of Sägebrecht and Giancarlo Giannini, the film is only partly funny and that many characters, especially that of daughter Marie, seem only partly sympathetic. As a result, panicked outbursts or states of intoxication caused by tranquilizers are neither charming nor funny, but simply annoying. The actors can hardly be blamed for this. Both Annette Frier, who has to play a really thankless role here, and Miriam Stein (Goethe!) act with obvious passion. But the script simply gives them a too superficial dramaturgy and too weak dialogues to be able to translate this passion adequately.

Here and there Wigand manages quite well to let the film be dominated by the flair that the locations in Rome exude, which has the consequence that the inherently obvious weaknesses and all too worn-out clichés are covered up a bit and thus the entertainment value of the film is increased significantly. But in the end you are left with the realization that without the pretty pictures and the strong Marianne Sägebrecht Omamamia would just be a shallow TV movie that has no business being in the cinema. Surprisingly, Tomy Wigand has certainly demonstrated a talent for engaging storytelling and comedic timing, especially with his recent TV work (Willkommen im Westerwald, Das große Comeback). That this talent was used here just as rudimentary as that of the actors, is just a shame and makes the film despite the quite positive aspects bottom line only: conditionally worth seeing!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp