Gitti (Birgit Minichmayr) and Chris (Lars Eidinger) fight like Everyone Else.No exit
By John Esther
Gitti (Birgit Minichmayr) and Chris (Lars Eidinger) should be having the loving time of their lives. Here the German couple are staying in his mother's lovely villa in Italy. The weather is lovely, he has a good job, she can ignore her job even more, and they have all the solitude for spontaneous sex any time. But instead, they focus most of their time bickering, fighting, and hurting each other emotionally -- just like everyone else?
Written and directed by Maren Ade (The Forest for the Trees) the first part of the New Lights Competition film focuses on what makes the couple work. They have a certain dynamic suggesting they feel extraordinarily hipper than everyone else, especially Chris' mother, who has these funny collections around the place. This tragically hip attitude loses altitude when Gitti, a flaky publicist with an unremarkable intellect, challenges everyone else on his or her opinions. Rather than stick it in for his wife, Chris sticks up for his friends, and rightfully so. (While I would not call it misogyny, Ade clearly likes the male characters more than her female ones in Everyone Else.)
A two-hour film feeling a lot longer, despite the gorgeous cinematography by Bernhard Keller and the solid performance by the two leads, Everyone Else putters like a poor play. Too much of the movements, actions and reactions have a staged feeling. This may be somewhat the point considering the last 30 minutes of the film where Gitti commits two or three actions so obnoxious and melodramatic it is hard not to root for Chris to kick her right out of this stage in his life. That he does not makes you wonder what she has to do to get him to exit the couple.
(Everyone Else is scheduled to screen Oct. 30, 9:30 p.m. at Mann Chinese Theater 6, 6801 Hollywood Blvd. For more information: 866/AFI-FEST; www.afi.com.)
