Angela Schanelec — Playwright (2)
Places in Cities (1998) [Movie] Douban TMDB IMDb WikiData
Plätze in Städten
director: 安格拉·夏娜莱克 actor: Sophie Aigner / Vincent Branchet
other title: 城市之地 / Plätze in Städten
Mimmi lives with her mother in an apart-ment on the edge of town. They won't be living together for much longer because Mimmi is about to take her final exams at school and will soon move out. Mimmi's mother is still young and sometimes wish-es Mimmi didn't need her so much and yet, at other times, that she needed her more, like before. But Mimmi herself doesn't say very much and it's often hard to tell what thoughts preoccupy her. She sees her girlfriend, goes out with her boyfriend; she also has the odd flash-in-the-pan relationship with other men. She is often alone - perhaps just waiting for the time to pass, or for a new life to begin. On a school trip to Paris she meets and sleeps with a young man. When she gets back to Berlin she discovers that she is pregnant. She heads for Paris again where she spends two days trying to find the father of her child. She has no money and doesn't even know where she can sleep. She begins to daydream - and gets more and more tired.
Orly (2010) [Movie] Douban IMDb TMDB WikiData
Orly
director: 安格拉·夏娜莱克 actor: Natacha Régnier / Bruno Todeschini
other title: 奥利机场 / Orly, Poem 1-4
Amidst the impersonal hubbub of Paris' Orly Airport, strangers meet, secrets are revealed, and sudden intimacies develop in this beautifully observed mosaic of lives in transit.
Loosely-linked scenes in the hall of Paris’ Orly airport. A man and a woman, both French but living abroad, meet each other by chance. He has just decided to move back to Paris and she longs to return there. A mother and her almost adult son are going to the funeral of her ex-husband, his father. A young couple is embarking on its first big trip. And a woman reads a letter from the man she has recently left. They are all waiting for their flight.
The departure hall is a place of transit. People are between the here and there, between the “not yet” and the “no more”. Schanelec places four couples amid the crowds of waiting passengers; the camera observes them, often from a distance. But their conversations can be heard; the ear is closer than the eye. Intimate islands of dialogue amid hectic activity. The tremendous background noise does them no harm until the music comes and infects the whole room. Cat Power sings “Remember Me”, reinforcing the atmosphere of longing, separation and transitoriness that already lingers in the air. Later, the off-screen monologue of a dying, loving man adds to it. “Love Will Tear Us Apart” – that’s what’s written at the beginning on a record cover. A farewell film.