THE STORY – While at work, Thomas, a 40-year-old crane operator, receives a phone call: His wife is in the hospital and asks him to pick her up. He finds her crying.
THE CAST – Vladimir Vulević, Agathe Bonitzer & Birte Schnöink
THE TEAM – Angela Schanelec (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 93 Minutes
Thomas (Vladimir Vulević, drolly withdrawn) doesn’t know it yet, but his world is about to be turned upside down. The forty-year-old construction worker is having a perfectly fine day behind the controls of a crane when he’s summoned to the office after a phone call from his wife. He makes small talk with the office girls about his wife’s work as a kindergarten teacher and what it would feel like to lose a child. He shows them pictures on his phone, since his wife doesn’t pick up when he tries to call. More small talk between the office assistants as we watch Thomas sit, puzzling over what to do about his wife while the construction site still hums outside, despite looking like not much is happening. Smash cut to Thomas’s wife, Carla (Agathe Bonitzer, captivatingly unstable), sitting on a bench. Thomas eventually finds her, and thank God, because once she starts crying, she can’t stop.
Like most (if not all) European art house films, Angela Schanelec’s “My Wife Cries” would have you believe that it is so much more complex than its simple situation/title. On the surface, the film is about a husband caught off guard that his wife has feelings that she doesn’t share with him (she’s been having an emotional affair with a man from a dance class, with whom she was just in a car accident that he didn’t survive). Still, the real subject matter lies in what the characters talk about. Stopping for long stretches so characters can talk about completely unrelated things, like how rare it is to have friends from different generations, or what it really means to fail, or the price of couches, Schanelec’s film fits comfortably in the long line of films about disaffected Europeans philosophizing at each other while plot may or may not happen around them. It has enough quirky bits and strong compositions to keep you hoping something interesting will happen, but it never quite does. Until Thomas, Carla, and their friends start dancing to Leonard Cohen’s “Lover, Lover, Lover” out of nowhere. Oh, those crazy, kooky Europeans; can’t figure out a single thing about how to live a happy life, but they won’t let that stop them from letting loose with the most awkward, unself-conscious dance moves you’ve ever seen.
Schanelec’s direction stands out as the film’s strongest element. Some shots are so still they almost look like freeze frames, while others use movement and deep focus to emphasize life’s absurdity (wait for the brass band). Every single shot is rigorously composed without ever feeling stiflingly airless, a unique trait especially in today’s cinematic landscape. Even her choices about when not to cut often provoke interest, as in the first scene when the camera stays on Thomas absent-mindedly scrolling on his phone while the office girls have a whole conversation without him. Strong as the filmmaking choices are, though, they don’t add all that much substance to the film, just some (much-needed) visual interest.
One topic of discussion for the characters is how words can fill the space between people, which feels instructive as to how to approach the film. But even with that in mind (and accounting for the vagaries of translating for subtitles), the words spoken here don’t sound like things living, breathing human beings would say to each other. Even pretentious college philosophy students aren’t that dull when talking about affairs of the heart, and even though that’s the center of the film’s story, most of the dialogue isn’t even about it. Sure, the screenplay’s discursive nature means everything the characters say is in conversation with the leads’ situation. Still, their conversations go so far afield that it becomes an endurance test, even if this style of film is your thing. Scene after interminable scene, the characters prattle on about anything but what they should be talking about, with precious little entertainment value to compensate, making this one of the longest 93-minute films you will ever see. For those with an affinity for this kind of film, it adds nothing new or interesting to the genre; it’s been done many times before, with more intrigue and better scripts. For those of us who don’t, it’s a tedious, meandering bore.
