SYNOPSICS
Das Fräulein (2006) is a German,Swiss German,Bosnian movie. Andrea Staka has directed this movie. Mirjana Karanovic,Marija Skaricic,Ljubica Jovic,Andrea Zogg are the starring of this movie. It was released in 2006. Das Fräulein (2006) is considered one of the best Drama movie in India and around the world.
Ruza left Belgrade for Switzerland as a young woman full of hope for a new and better life. Twentyfive years later she appears to have achieved everything: She owns a canteen in Zurich, which she manages with a firm grip and financial success. Ruza values her meticulously structured daily routine, both in her professional and private life. Ruzas's orderly world shifts when 22 year-old Ana from Sarajevo enters the scene. She feels threatened by Ana's direct and impulsive manner while at the same time she is intrigued by her zest for life. Slowly a friendship develops between these two self-willed women. However, a certain distance between them remains: Ruza's afraid to open herself up completely, and Ana has a secret too difficult for herself to reveal.
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Das Fräulein (2006) Reviews
It's All About The Women
This German/Swiss co-production (filmed in Switzerland)is about three generations of women from Bosnia-Herzgovina. A young woman,living from day to day,a middle aged owner/manager of a restaurant & an older worker. It manages to nicely weave a trilogy of stories on how these women got to where they are (and why). I couldn't help notice that the movie seemed to be shot live on high definition video,rather than standard 35mm film stock,which gives it a certain look (mind you,I'm not beefing). Das Fraulein (or as it's being distributed in the U.S. as merely Fraulein) is a lovingly written/directed & acted film (video?) about 3 women trying to make do with their lives,and the hard knocks they've all been dealt with.
Deeply felt, quiet, honest drama of women needing each other to survive
Fraulein (2006) A remarkable, small, deeply felt, just slightly offbeat film about what must have been a common and terribly real and depressing reality. Several women from the former Yugoslavia are living in German speaking Switzerland, and the old ties, old animosities, and new ties and friendships, are poignant and delicately worked out. Sometimes low budget films revel in their lack of polish, as if announcing they are rebellious. "Fraulein" is really not at all an underground film, but rather just a serious one working within some limitations of money and time. And they make the most of it on every level. Above all, the main actresses--the older woman running the little restaurant and the young woman with some undisclosed inner trauma--are searingly right on. The one is repressed and responsible and a bit lifeless, living to survive, and proud to be surviving. The other is a little wild and unpredictable, full of life but with a recklessness that seems unwarranted. At first. Both women are sad and lonely, and that leads to their needing each other, though both are so stubbornly independent they have trouble coming together as friends. When they do, in small ways, the screen lights up and you keep thinking, yes, yes, at last. You understand how hard it is to find true companionship, and even when you do, it doesn't work out quite right. Still, they both offer cracks in each other's worlds, and we get sucked in for the joy of it, and the eventual disappointment. A surprising film, very moving, and yet quietly so. Give it a chance to get under your skin. At first, watching just the older woman, you think this is some East Berlin throwback and it's just sad and slow. But it's all for a good end, and things complicate. And the two women, once you get to know them, will win you over.
Gem of a movie
Three women of three different generations, all of Balkan heritage, live their lives lost and homesick in Switezerland. Ruza is a Serb, Mila Croatian and Ana probably urban Bosnian Muslem. But this gentle, thoughtful movie doesn't go there. This is not about ethnic hatred and intolerance, and the bloody war in former Yugoslavia, at least not in any direct way. These three women and their plight bring closer the curse of immigration. The desire for better or safer life, deeply intertwined with loss of roots, belonging and even sense of self. Three women touch each other's lives, and continue their arduous journey called life. Director Andrea Staka doesn't use cheep, tawdry means. She just tells a story as it is. Mirjana Karanovic, Ljubica Jovic and Marija Skaricic, three marvelous actors perfectly cast in this gem of a movie.
Women in flux
Somewhere in Yugoslavia, Ruza(Mirjana Karajovich) left behind a man who didn't follow her younger self to Germany. Presumably, this is the man we see cutting branches off some denuded trees in the opening moments of "Das Fraulein", a film that conveys the same American celluloidal myth that women can't have it all. When the man's pruning shears cuts through one more indistinguishable branch(symbolic of women like Ruza who left their homeland), the screen abruptly goes black, and the first image we see after that severing, is an overhead shot of Ruza in bed, no longer a fraulein, but a spinster, childless to boot. Not satisfied with being a mere branch on some tree(a patriarchal metaphor), Ruza came to Germany, learned a new language, learned anew, period. But the modestly successful restuaranteer is not happy, far from it. That's the price a woman has to pay for choosing a career over family. Quite literally, the filmmaker shows that Ruza made her bed and now she must lie in it. The visage of this middle-aged woman tells the whole story; there is no love story, only her canteen, and the endless counting of money. Without variation, Ruza gets up every morning, takes the graffiti-filled elevator in her apartment complex, and walks to work in an industrial landscape dotted by warehouses and train tracks. Like clockwork, Mila(Ljubica Jovic, her cloyingly pleasant underling, waits for Ruza to unlock the front door. In her office, the only photograph we see is a lonely photograph of a younger Ruza posing with the restaurant facade, at the opening. This is what she sacrificed a husband and children for. Ruza has been married to this canteen for twenty-five years. Her unsmiling face indicates that it's time for a divorce. Meanwhile, a new has just arrived in town, a drifter from war-torn Sarajevo, a Bosnian. Ana(Marija Skaricic) survived the war, but will she survive leukaemia? After spending a night with friends, Ana wanders into Ruza's canteen and gets hired as a waitress. How long will it take for Ana to take over the canteen and inject a shot of "joie de vivre" into its zombie-like visitors, especially Ruza, who sees her former fraulein self in the new girl. Not long. At seventy-five minutes, the short running time mirror's Ana's sense of urgency to make every minute count. In one sequence, contrary to her co-worker's presumptions about their boss, Ruza has no objections to her birthday being celebrated. Ana's gambit pays off. As the older fraulein dances, the filmmaker uses exaggerated light to document the exact moment of Ruza's rejuvenation, as her hair flies around in the heightened shining that takes years off the restauranteer's leathery skin. Light is used to signify youth, as in another scene where Ruza and Ana run like schoolgirls through a downpour; the light catching the trajectory of the raindrops and the bounce of the women's hair. But Ana's own light is wavering, exemplified by the strobe light of the night clubs which Ruza's charge frequents. The intermittent dark, the micro-second pauses between the electric breathing is where Ana's destiny lies. But before the darkness shines permanently out of Ana's diseased body, she teaches Ruza how to let people into her life again. While "Das Fraulein" can be overly schematic, there's enough emotional truth between both frauleins that outweigh the cliché of the unmarried and childless woman who fixates on the younger woman as a daughter figure. Ana's surprisingly guarded side prevents the film from devolving into easy sentimentality. To the viewer's surprise, Ana has an emotional stuntedness which prevents her from getting close to people. Whereas Ruza was looking for somebody to love, Ana has an insularity about her that won't allow the child of war to love back.
Ever heard of Balkan cinematography?
I saw this film in Thessaloniki,Greece film festival in November 2006 and I was simply amused by all the matters that occurred in it! But I wouldn't like to talk about the plot... Right the previous day I had seen Grbavica, a film by Jasmila Zbanic- a young director from Bosnia Herzegovina , starring Mirjana Karanovic, the most known actress around the Balkan countries (except maybe for Greece). Grbavica was plain, interesting but totally in control and simply a nice film with a spicy subject matter. Most enjoyable of all,Mirjana Karanovic! I was happy enough to see all her charm, if u can call it that way, in a fresh film by an upcoming director but when I saw Das Fräulein, then I finally realized the depths of her acting... Sorry for making such an intro but this film is about her and if you get to realize what she is standing for , everything makes a lot more sense. Of course she is not the main dish and that's also an exciting thing! Director Andrea Staka made a film to talk about what these people carry with them, what they are made of. We don't really know... We don't... It's not about characters in a film, not about a plot, it's about the actors,the director,the people of Bosnia,Yugoslavia,Serbia.. Political backgrounds, immigration, war,personal past all mixed up with youth, health and life perspective... ... all packed up in a simple, honest way... That's what it is about!