What Remains

Writer Marko (Lars Eidinger), who has just published his first book, lives far from the petit-bourgeois world of his parents in Berlin. He returns to his rural home only rarely and extremely reluctantly. After a long time, Marko has once again allowed himself to be persuaded to make a weekend visit, which he undertakes together with his son Zowie (Egon Merten). But it soon becomes clear that this time he really can't expect a relaxed weekend. For mother Gitte (Corinna Harfouch) reveals to the family that she, who has been suffering from psychological problems for several years, has stopped taking her medication and will only rely on homeopathic treatment. Father Günter (Ernst Stötzner), who has recently sold his publishing company, is just as overwhelmed by the news as Marko's brother Jakob (Sebastian Zimmler), who is additionally planning extreme fears for the future due to his poorly running dental practice. When only Marko stands behind his mother's decision, the already tense situation threatens to escalate - with dramatic consequences.

With Was bleibt, director Hans-Christian Schmid (23, Requiem) has staged a quiet drama about the fragility of the family as a social construct. The third collaboration between Schmid and screenwriter Bernd Lange was intended to be a more private story focused on its characters, following the very plot-oriented Was bleibt. On the one hand, it was intended to portray the generation of 30 to 40-year-olds who find themselves in a position between being parents and still playing the role of children themselves. On the other hand, the film is also a symbolization of the role of the mother in such a petit-bourgeois family and the consequences of what happens when she no longer functions as the figure holding the family together.

Borne by a quite strong ensemble of actors, the drama shot in Recklinghausen and the surrounding area manages very well to show how fragile one is as an individual person when the family itself no longer holds together. The mother, who is depressed, the father, who has been having an affair for years, the brother, who eats his fears for the future inside himself and thus puts his relationship with his girlfriend, but also with the rest of his family, at risk. On the outside, the family seems wholesome, life rosy. But a look beneath the surface reveals deep cracks, insecurities, loneliness and lies. These are truly not new insights, as these are the ingredients from which most family dramas are made. And so Schmid's film can't completely escape some very overused clichés. Nevertheless, he knows how to build up a particularly oppressive atmosphere, especially through his visual language, which gives his film a very special, individual touch.

Admittedly, the sometimes somewhat brittle acting and the dreariness hovering over everything make the film a bit unwieldy, so that viewers who don't have a soft spot for German arthouse cinema might have a hard time with the production. However, those who enjoy small dramas that are quite intense in their quietness and are carried by good actors will certainly be able to discover the strengths of Was bleibt. It is certainly not the best film Hans-Christian Schmid has directed so far, but for the program cinema audience, the drama is definitely worth seeing!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp