On a high school exchange program, Fanny from Strasbourg timorously takes a train to neighboring Germany to meet her penpal Lena, who lives in Leipzig. The first impact between the childlike French girl and the self-assured, older-than-her-years German is pretty dismal, but in the course of Langue étrangère (literally, Foreign Tongue), they will bind over a common interest: their desire to use politics and protest to change the world. Only it’s not as simple as that.
Earning a competition slot in Berlin, Claire Burger’s youthful drama is branded with the same commendable lack of sentimentality and search for psychological truth, warts and all, as her first feature Party Girl, which she co-directed with film-school buddies Marie Amachoukeli and Samuel Theis; it won the Camera d’Or at Cannes in 2014. Her first solo feature is professionally executed and holds together very well, even if the sparks of narrative and cinematic innovation are largely missing, making this Goodfellas release more plausible as a theatrical release in Europe than a big festival hit.
The young leads are flanked by international arthouse stars Nina Hoss and Chiara Mastroianni, who provide a much-needed intergenerational angle on the story. It is Susanne (Hoss), a harried and nervous single mom, who picks up poor, lost-looking Fanny (Lilith Grasmug) at the train station when she arrives in Leipzig for a month’s visit. Her daughter Lena (played with aggressive flair by bright newcomer Josefa Heinsius) is too busy attending protest marches against capitalism, fascism and globalization to have anything to do with her pretty but wimpy French penpal. Her uncooperative attitude adds to Susanne’s anxieties over her ex moving out of the house with his twin sons, a burden she lightens with alcohol.
Though the tension in the spacious modern house is palpable, Fanny seems blithely unconcerned, as though she understood nothing. But at the last minute before she is sent home, she confesses to Lena she tried to commit suicide a month ago because of similar family problems. Lena, tough on the outside but with a soft heart, decides to befriend her. Language problems notwithstanding.
Because although the whole point of the cultural exchange is for the girls to immerse themselves in each other’s culture and language, neither one seems able to carry on a bilingual conversation, as their mothers can do effortlessly. In critical moments the younger generation slips into the universal currency of English.
Yet words are no obstacle for the friendship, and more, that flowers between Lena and Fanny, when the latter confesses to the former she has a missing half-sister who is a radical militant on the extreme left. When Lena comes to Strasbourg on the return part of the visit, they grow emotionally and physically closer as they search for the mythicized missing sister.
In the Strasbourg scenes, we also gain insight into Fanny’s home life. Her frazzled mom Antonia (Mastroianni), a translator at the European Parliament, has lost the battle of juggling work and home life after Fanny’s suicide attempt. There are shouting matches at dinner, and relations are also tense with her father, who vocally supports democracy, but spends entire days away for work.
Grasmug (who made a splash in the Swiss film Thunder as a novitiate who is sent home from the convent and discovers sensual delight) is convincing although not very likable as the immature Fanny, who uses her femininity – perhaps unconsciously – as a lure for Lena’s friendship. Fanny is, as Lena notes early on, a 17-year-old who acts like a 12-year-old. The victim of bullying at school, she has changed schools frequently but without any benefit. She adopts a variety of defensive behaviors to cover up her insecurities. Most insidiously, she is a compulsive liar, and with Lena and her family she finds a new audience to hoodwink with invented tales of her life and backstory.
Their growing closeness is set against judiciously filmed protest marches that include news footage and photos, some real demonstrations and some dream images of police in body armor and truncheons battling with violent anarchists like the infamous black bloc. Heinsius is a stand-out as Lena, believably projecting the frustrations of her generation at the injustice of European society, along with the delicacy and pains of sexual awakening. It would be interesting to see her ten years from now in the role of a Euro politician, grappling with the same problems from the side of power.
Director: Claire Burger
Screenwriters: Claire Burger with Léa Mysius
Producer: Marie-Ange Luciani
Cast: Lilith Grasmug, Josefa Heinsius, Nina Hoss, Chiara Mastroianni, Jalal Altawil
Cinematography: Julien Poupard
Production design: Pascale Consigny
Costume design: Isabelle Pannetier
Editing: Frédéric Baillehaiche, Claire Burger
Music: Rebeka Warrior
Sound: Julien Tan Ham Sicard
Sound design: Olivier Goinard
Production companies: Les Films de Pierre (Paris) in association with Razor Film Produktion (Berlin), Les Films du Fleuve (Liège), Arte France Cinéma (Strassburg), MDR/Arte (Leipzig)
World sales: Goodfellas
Venue: Berlin Film Festival (Competition)
In French, German, English
105 minutes
