Marlene Burow in Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything, in Competition at the 2023 Berlinale.
© Pandora Film / Row Pictures
The fall of the Iron Curtain is the backdrop for romance in Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything / Irgendwann werden wir uns alles Erzaehlen. Set in a rural village near the border between East and West Germany, the movie tackles politics, class, and family dynamcs, all cloaked in exceptional period detail and shot with a golden glow by cinematographer Armin Dierolf.
Harvesting grain, swimming in rivers, bopping to music on back roads: Someday is an exercise in nostalgia for the 1990s, told from a 1950s perspective (which East Germany at the fall resembled). Working from a screenplay with Daniela Krien, who wrote the source novel, Emily Atef lays out themes and symbols like chess pieces. East Germany represents honest labor, tight-knit families, open relationships. The West? DVD players, expensive cameras, clothes, restaurants, cars that don’t flip over in a strong wind.
Mostly Someday focuses on sex, the hot and heavy illicit kind that was a fixture of late-night cable back in the 1980s. L’amour fou with a Teutonic bent. Parents Siegfried (Florian Panzer) and Marianne (Silke Bodenbender) have accepted 19-year-old Maria (Marlene Burow) into their family. Enticed by her skimpy sundresses, son Johannes (Cedric Eich) welcomes Maria into bed.
But Maria is drawn to the msyterious, moody Henner (Felix Kramer), a farmer twice her age who harbors secrets.
Repulsed but attracted, Maria flirts with Henner until he forces himself on her. Shocked, Maria runs home, only to realize that Johannes can no longer compete.
Does that mean the stronger, earthier East satisfies more than the effete, consumerist West? If only Someday were that interesting. Atef doesn’t show much interest in any of the story’s elements apart from couplings. Frankly, the sexual politics here seem dated, to put it kindly. Old guy does it to teen until she likes it is more porn than politics.
Perhaps familiar with the novel, viewers at a press screening in Berlin’s Palast theater seemed more attuned to the movie’s take on a turning point in German history. Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything / Irgendwann werden wir uns alles Erzaehlen screened in competition at this year’s Berlinale.
