There is a lot to admire in Katharina Woll’s excellent feature Everybody Wants to be Loved. It plays like a romcom but is mostly without the ingratiating clichés of the form. It feels like a Nora Ephron film—if the late Ephron was more European than American. With a little prodding, adult audiences, wherever they may be found, should embrace the film’s blend of drama and politics.
We follow Ina (Anne Ratte-Polle), a psychotherapist living in Germany, as she navigates several different things: a tricky patch in her relationship, motherhood to her rebellious but otherwise caring daughter Elli, a few patients, and a self-interested mother. Her partner Reto wants Ina to move with him to Finland; her daughter, Elli, wants to go live with her father; her patients crave a solution or some attention; and Ina’s mother wants her daughter’s help and presence at her upcoming 70th birthday.
It’s a torrid time—but Ina takes it all in her stride, or tries to. Ratte-Polle, who seems to have been chosen for the role by a group of benign gods, plays the character with grace and subdued fortitude, in a manner anyone who’s been frazzled by the demands of others will recognise. She seems to be aware that even though the screenplay barely gets a word wrong and the film’s tone is perfect, failure or success rests on her shoulders. And she absolutely nails it. Woll, who is a co-writer with Florian Plumeyer, might be making a political point about the burden of being a working woman with both a career and romantic needs, but her lead actress is always flesh and blood. If the story’s point is that to be a woman is to be stretched thin, well, first, you do need a woman in the story. And Ratte-Polle’s is that woman.
The film goes on for quite a while before the entrance of Ina’s ex-husband, Elli’s father. At that point, the temperature of the film alters a teeny bit. What’s been a talky affair adds a layer of physicality, although the conversations never really cease. There’s some violence, which for a different sort of filmmaker (and story) might be the climax. But Woll, although a first timer, possesses the sensibility of an older director. The violence does belong in the tale being spun but it isn’t fetishized. Woll maintains the film’s semi-droll vibe and takes the viewer to a satisfying conclusion.
As though she senses her story needs a different kind of physicality, we get a tragi-comic scene of singing at the birthday. Of course, for a particular generation of viewers, Robert Carlyle “owns” Hot Chocolate’s ‘You Sexy Thing’. But there is something so winning about Ratte-Polle’s first few moments singing the song that a clip of it could join Monty Python’s on YouTube. That might very well confer the scene with a measure of digital immortality. What Woll does next should be worth the wait.
Director: Katharina Woll
Screenplay: Florian Plumeyer, Katharina Woll
Cast: Anne Ratte-Polle, Lea Drinda, Ulrike Willenbacher, Urs Jucker, Hassan Akkouch
Producers: Markus Kaatsch, Nina Poschinski, Michael Grudsky
Director of Photography: Matan Radin
Editor: Kai Minierski
Production Designer: Winnie Christiansen, Anne Storandt
Sound Design: Julian Cropp, Denis Elmaci
Production Companies: Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin, Zeitgeist Filmproduktion
Distributor: Camino Filmverleih
Venue: Munich Film Festival
In German
80 minutes
