THE STORY – Unbeknownst to her mother, Lea, with her father’s approval, is auditioning for a German talent show. She has a calm demeanour on stage and has a great voice, so the judges admire her. However, after being asked what defines her as a person, Lea can’t come up with an answer, so her search for inner meaning begins. There are multiple story strands to do with Lea’s extended family, one follows her grandmother, who struggles to keep her hotel afloat. Another is Lea’s parents; her mother is pregnant with another man, a teacher at school, and her father deals with this new reality. Her aunt, Kati, is the one person Lea looks up to; she’s the head of a local museum that’s been recently renovated. She is the only person that Lea fully trusts and respects in her family.
THE CAST – Frida Hornemann, Max Riemelt, Eva Löbau, Gina Henkel & Rahel Ohm
THE TEAM – Eva Trobisch (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 116 Minutes
German writer-director Eva Trobisch’s Berlinale competition entry, “Etwas ganz Besonderes” (Or “Home Stories”), is a complex family drama that gets muddled in its many narrative strands. The cast is expansive, and there are many characters to keep track of, which can become quite confusing as some storylines take priority while others get lost in the mix. The family’s emotions often come from deep within, as everything looks rosy on camera, but the audience sees the volatile nature of their family dynamics.
16-year-old Lea (Frida Hornemann) auditions for a place on a German talent show on national television. The television station’s camera comes to her school to surprise her with the news; she’s overjoyed, but when she is asked to sit down and do an interview to present herself to the nation, she is stumped. She’s camera-shy but also doesn’t really know her place in society yet. Lea and her family live in Greiz, an Eastern town in Thuringia that was once part of East Germany. Lea’s father, Matze (Max Riemelt), and mother, Rieke (Gina Henkel), are recently separated, with Matze being currently pregnant with another man’s child. It isn’t explicitly explained why they broke up, but one can presume it has something to do with that. Lea doesn’t have a good relationship with either of her parents, but is much closer to her mother’s sister Kati (Eva Löbau), who is a museum curator and historian. She is trying to fund the restoration of an old East German palace that she’s been working on for a while.
Lea’s grandparents, from Matze’s side, own an old, grand hotel outside of the town. The business is struggling due to the lack of tourists in the local area. So, they resort to letting a controversial, right-leaning group hold a conference in their hotel. This doesn’t go down well with the family, but at this point, Lea’s grandparents have to take any opportunity they get. Also, they own some horses and a stable, which they are forced to sell, but run into trouble further down the line when one of the horses is found to be in poor condition. It’s a family drama that has many narrative strands, but Lea is the centre of everything, despite not showing up in every location that the film cuts to.
Lea is a young, talented girl with a great opportunity to show off her musical talents. This is a simple yet good launch pad for the film to start from. The audience quickly becomes engaged with her character, as she goes on national television with a beautiful rendition of Coldplay’s “Fix You.” She has a calming, innocent presence and a wonderful voice that impresses the judges and viewers alike. For a moment, her whole family is connected, and tears of joy fill her parents’ eyes as they briefly reconnect thanks to their talented daughter.
The film is split into multiple ongoing narrative strands. Lea’s struggle is evidently the strongest story, but the film almost forgets about her as it goes on. She is almost always present, but little extra time is given to fully explore her inner conflict, which is a big shame. Lea’s talent show arc is forgotten for a long period, and when Trobisch finally remembers to loop back to it, it’s disappointingly shrugged off. She didn’t get through, and that’s it. It’s rather infuriating. Also, non-German speakers may struggle to stay engaged, as the barrage of information in the dialogue can become quite overwhelming. It all becomes a bit confusing and hard to keep track of where each character in the ensemble is, physically and emotionally. Some characters are there for the sake of it, which makes sense in reality, but in a film like this, they become unnecessary distractions from the primary characters.
The performances are all very naturalistic and do a great job of making their so-called home stories feel lived-in. Frida Hornemann is a wonderful talent whose stage performance and overall acting impress. Lea’s parents, played by Rahel Ohm and Peter René Lüdecke, have an interesting relationship; their chemistry feels real, and their struggles do too. Although Lea’s aunt’s story is one of the less interesting and more confusing parts of the film, Eva Löbau does a fine job playing a mother figure that Lea respects. The rest of the ensemble is good; the acting itself isn’t a problem in “Home Stories,” but the excessive number of cast members is definitely a serious flaw. It’s all too much to take in.
The filmmaking tendencies of “Home Stories” echo almost every European arthouse film that’s played at the Berlinale. The film’s images are rich and carefully composed, but have a slight edge, with the choice to destabilise the shots through handheld footage. It doesn’t try to be artsy; the intention is to capture authentic images that echo the lives of people living in East Germany. It’s not just the shots that have arthouse tendencies; themes of belonging and economic struggle, along with ambiguous storytelling, are staples of this kind of cinema. Admittedly, this film captures reality well, but it gets lost as the narrative becomes overcomplicated.
“Home Stories” is a messy, realistic portrait of the complexities of family life in modern East Germany. It gets lost in its ambitions to tell the story in a more complex way than was ever needed. At its core, the film is rather straightforward, following one family as they struggle, succeed, and live their daily lives. It’s really an observational piece showing a slice of life. It’s a struggle to remain fully engaged throughout the film, and it fails to become anything truly impactful or insightful.
