“A straightforward story told in unconventional tones of filmmaking, writing, and images, and for that, the film stands on its own in a sea of stories that feed us how to think.“

What if our lives were lived like an open book? What if, when we felt grief, happiness, passion and longing, we dealt with it as if living in a painting, or playing our favorite record (albeit it now would be called ‘streaming it on Spotify’)?

That’s the question that German auteur Angela Schanelec seems to ask of us, the audience, in her latest film My Wife Cries, which world premieres in this year’s Berlinale Competition. A prolific filmmaker who has directed ten features and half-a-dozen shorts, as well as starred in film and on TV, Schanelec has won the Berlinale Silver Bear twice – in 2019 for Best Director of I Was at Home, But and in 2023 for Best Screenplay of Music.

When we first meet Thomas (played by Serbian filmmaker Vladimir Vulević) he is at the construction site where he operates a crane, awaiting word from his partner who is not answering her phone. He is surrounded by women who work in the company’s offices, and right away we get the idea that they don’t speak the same language. Not in the literal sense, but more in what is said. Thomas is practical, his co-workers are not, weaving words around in the manner of a Rainer Maria Rilke poem. All the while Thomas remains on the screen, nearly immobile for an 8-minute shot.

When Thomas finally manages to talk to his longtime partner Carla (played by androgynous-looking French actress Agathe Bonitzer) he rushes to her side, meeting her in a park outside a hospital. It turns out Carla has just been in a car accident in which the driver died, but she has thankfully escaped unharmed. Or has she? As she begins to talk and cry to Thomas about her day, as well as the events leading up to the accident, we learn more and more, in the same way we would if we were reading a book. Albeit a wordy book with beautifully shot images of a couple coming apart in an unfilmable way. Carla had gone to meet a man she was beginning an affair with and the two were going to check out a house, possibly to rent together? We don’t know and we don’t need to know.

As the film unfolds, the relationship between Thomas and Carla unravels and at a crucial point, just when we realize we haven’t heard the usual soundtrack typically present in cinema, the film turns political through one song – an interesting note after that statement from Wim Wenders at the jury’s opening press conference saying that filmmakers should stay out of politics.

So how does My Wife Cries suddenly tap into the political vein? Through Leonard Cohen’s ‘Lover Lover Lover’, a song the artist wrote during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, which is meant to be a dialogue of misunderstanding between man and God, and is dedicated to both the Egyptian and the Israeli soldiers fighting in the war. And there, with this subtle nod, Schanelec suddenly brings back Wenders’ original statement from the past, when he actually said “Every film is political,” echoing the words of fellow helmer Louis Malle.

My Wife Cries is a straightforward story told in unconventional tones of filmmaking, writing, and images, and for that, the film stands on its own in a sea of stories that feed us how to think. While Schanelec leaves no word unturned and no occasion to display a still life of images unexplored, which run the gamut from root vegetables to a penis at repose, she does leave the final deductions to us, the audience. A wonderfully refreshing plot device for a contemporary film. One I’ll welcome and one which keeps it replaying, gracefully, in my thoughts.

(c) Image copyright – Blue Monticola Film