Rich Colors Before Black

Want to know how miserably long 85 minutes can feel? If your answer is yes, then you should definitely buy a ticket for the drama "Saturated Colors Before Black". And after what feels like three hours, you too will know how it feels to have an inherently beautiful and touching story told in an unbearably worn way.

For half a century now, Anita (Senta Berger) and Fred (Bruno Ganz) have been a couple. Actually, they can look back on a full life. They have two grown-up children, their granddaughter is about to graduate from high school and Fred has finished a successful professional career. But Fred is seriously ill, something the couple has kept from their children until now. But when he begins to take liberties that completely blindside his devoted wife, the rest of the family learns of Fred's illness. The marriage that once seemed so unbreakable is now seriously challenged. But a love like the one between Anita and Fred cannot end that easily...

For her feature debut, Sophie Heldmann has chosen a story that is in itself very moving and touching, carried by two strong leading actors. But unfortunately Heldmann decided to choose such a carried narrative form, which makes it extremely difficult for the audience to build up the necessary sympathy for the protagonists. In itself, it wasn't a bad idea to make Anita and Fred an intrinsically wealthy couple in order to show that material prosperity can't protect against illness and death. But because of the staging, the "simple" viewer has a hard time identifying with the problems of the materially privileged characters in the film, even if the actual problems they face know no social boundaries.

Additionally, the film doesn't necessarily leave its audience with a positive feeling. Sure, not every movie needs a happy ending and actually, the ending in all its sadness and drama is quite beautiful. But again, it's the staging that unnecessarily drags out every quintessentially moving moment, making it difficult if not impossible to develop the emotions that such a scene is supposed to evoke. For the tears that are shed here are not tears of sympathy, but rather of sadness - sadness that the opportunity for some very big emotional cinema has been given away here. Therefore, the following applies: lovers of the rather unwieldy German arthouse cinema may be able to make friends with this production, but those who are hoping for more emotional and level entertainment cinema will be bitterly disappointed and, what is even worse, punished with actually unnecessary boredom.

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp