FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Christian Petzold - Die innere Sicherheit


How about the exact opposite to our "Corona" living situation at home? Here comes a family that has had to run away all their lives. Changing names, identities.

 This is one of the saddest scenes ever! It takes place somewhere in Portugal during the off-season. It's cold, there are no tourists around. Two girls in the street are talking and teasing their companion, a boy on a moped. They are in no hurry, the street is theirs. The two girls kiss each other goodbye, then one of them gets on the moped with her companion. It is an everyday encounter that is observed by Jeanne, about 15 years old. Jeanne (Julia Hummer) looks down from her balcony; she can hardly take her eyes off it. Isn't it lucky to be able to talk to whoever you want, to form a couple and then just drive away laughing? For Jeanne, all this is unattainable. She lives underground, after her parents were active in the resistance twenty years ago. Former RAF "terrorists" who have been on the run ever since. The internal security of Christian Petzold is about a child who tries to be "normal". Just like everyone else. An impossible wish for Jeanne! Her father Hans (Richy Müller) has no interest in strangers. The main thing is that Jeanne does not talk to them and does not make friends with anyone. Hans' features are always alert, his clothes inconspicuous. Just like her mother Clara (Barbara Auer). If Clara allowed her surroundings to even notice her, one would recognize her ageless sad beauty. Clara, however, wears colorless unisex clothes. The next morning Jeanne is approached by a surfer. No longer than the puff of a cigarette. He tells her his name is Heinrich and that he comes from Germany. Then Heinrich notices that "Jeanne" sounds so French. At a later reunion Heinrich will tell her about the Villa Stahl, which belongs to his family. But since the mother took her own life there, the Villa Stahl has stood empty. Jeanne and Heinrich could become a couple. But just like their parents' existence, their future would have to be built on lies. Later, Hans and Clara will settle down in the Villa Stahl and enjoy the floor heating. Underfloor heating! Wasn't that what they were always fighting against? But the former "revolutionaries" can't stop talking about the "old" and the "wrong". Jeanne is finally faced with a decision to leave the underground, her shadow world... If you read a few interviews with Christian Petzold, you'll see how impressed he was by the fact that former RAF terrorist Wolfgang Grams made jam in the underground. That gave Petzold the idea for his film. But what are Hans and Clara doing to their child anyway! The cruelest kind of education is an enforced ideal! Hans and Clara are tyrants! Hans believes he is teaching his daughter in love something for life when he talks about how class warriors keep silent during interrogation. But the few conversations in the family are nothing more than interrogations! They compare the data of fictitious CVs. Finally, Jeanne becomes a security risk. "She's in love and we can't think of anything better than to interrogate her," says Clara. She tries to muster some motherly love for her daughter, but the underground fight is stronger. There is no tenderness and no smiling. We see all this in Jeanne's eyes during this first scene. It is the overwhelming longing of a girl for whom a smile seems like a foreign language.