“A triumph of subtlety, and anchored by a volcanic performance, this film deserves a wide audience.”

Navigating between her busy work schedule and taking care of her elderly parents and her schizophrenic brother Sven (Jens Brock), spiritual healer Holle (Jenny Schily) is at wits’ end when her mother takes a nasty fall and needs to be hospitalized. With a sister and brother-in-law who don’t raise a finger and a husband (Johannes Zeiler) who thinks it’s nonsense to take such care of family, making sure that her father and brother are fed and not in each other’s hair falls completely on Holle. Her dad has always resented his son’s disease, berating the hulking and extremely introverted middle-aged man at will. Holle notices that her brother is not doing well and slowly trying to kill himself, but neither family nor institutions can or will help her. As she reaches the breaking point, she realizes: something has to happen, or this whole family will be broken apart.

A small and subdued film, Tim Ellrich’s narrative feature debut In My Parents’ House is nothing more or less than what it says on the tin: an intimate family drama about the strain the act of caregiving can impose on all involved. Shot in stark black and white, as if to underline the bleakness of the situation and the hopelessness of its central character, the unflinching portrait of a woman stretched thin is as depressing as it is uncompromising. While the situation surrounding her schizophrenic brother is not one most of us will have to face, people of a certain age whose parents are in the final phases of their lives know that there will come a moment when they will either have to become a caregiver or, like Holle’s sister, look away. It is that fact that makes In My Parents’ House so confrontational.

Ellrich was inspired by events within his own family, which is why the film feels so authentic and the characterizations lived in, perhaps with the exception of Holle’s husband Dieter, a one-note character so cynical and unlikable that you wonder why Holle didn’t leave him years ago. The film is even shot in the home of Ellrich’s grandparents, to make it abundantly clear how personal this story is to the young German director, something you feel in every frame of the film. Also in virtually every frame is Schily, whose powerhouse performance burns so bright that it almost lends color to the film. Frustration, exhaustion, and anger burst through the screen, Schily portraying a whole range of emotions that her character tries to hold in, but that can be seen burning behind her eyes. It’s an astonishing performance where she even gets the chance to finally let her emotions out when a cancer patient we see slipping in and out of the film passes away, a devastating scene that is Schily’s final coup de grace.

Though less noticeable, the non-professional Jens Brock as Holle’s brother is revelatory, even if at first glance it’s easy to dismiss the role as not giving him much to do. Sven is deliberately kept a mystery that is slowly revealed, almost like a real-life Orlok in Nosferatu. Little by little Brock’s imposing figure starts to enter the frames as he becomes an increasing burden under the care of his sister. Subtle nudges like these show Ellrich in control of the film, even if its length makes itself felt in the final stretch. Through a film that is close to his heart he has created a work that has universal reach, and while its execution is sober and understated, and never colors (pun intended) outside the lines in terms of the more technical aspects of filmmaking, the emotional heart of In My Parents’ House beats loud and will touch an audience that can easily connect to the film’s delicate theme of caregiving within a family context. Much like Haneke’s Amour, In My Parents’ House is a tender but also unflinching look at how family dynamics can put our natural urge to help others under pressure. A triumph of subtlety, and anchored by a volcanic performance, this film deserves a wide audience.