This is not history of what happened between Kleist the dramatist and story writer and Henriette Vogel, a married society lady who sang and played music. For one, it's presented as a love pact, I don't think he loves her, but he wants to die with someone who loves him. She admires his story The Marquis of O- .The Marquise of O is a transposition of Kleist's teasing 19th century novella about a chaste young widow ( who had sworn faithfulness to her late husband) suffering a pregnancy which she insists can only be the result of an immaculate conception.She is violated in sleep by a man she loves. Kleist's crisis, which is not presented in the film(which details Vogel's POV), is that having read Kant, he found it impossible to believe in some sort of divine fate or other worldly forces at work in humanity.We didn't know how we ought to live,nor the purpose of existence,nor what we are intended for,reason does not give us comprehension, human beings can never truly understand one another.The keystone of people's lives had been removed. Forget all that, Heinrich loves death more than life and seeks a soul mate to form a double suicide pact with.The movie centres on Henriette(Birte Schnoink), who seems a content wife and mother, obedient and submissive to her husband Frederich(Stephan Grossman), caring for their one daughter Pauline. With a maid Dorte she keeps house.Heinrich(Christian Friedel) is a visiting poet and friend,who attends the family's musical soirées.He informs her he's been rejected not in love but in his lover joining him in death.There is a stultifying quality to the furniture, wall paper, dead flowers, profusion of dogs ,paintings on the wall and the couple's separate beds. As in her film Lourdes,there is an oddness to the material and the awkward shooting of the scenes in static mode, people posed either full-on or sideways,each scene framed like a painting. The performances seem in a trance, a physical prison, from which Henriette can escape only through illness or death. Friedel portrays Kleist with an arch formality and stiffness, hunched over making his absurd requests. Hausner bleeds dry the language of romantic love,injecting humour. Henriette finds out too late her illness is not life-threatening. She agrees to a suicide pact when she thinks her disorder is incurable.Hausner employs a deadpan humour as Frederich employs methods to investigate her illness like hypnosis, or there are interminable discussions about the new taxes and the dangers of democracy, to anchor it in its specific time(1811). Heinrich feels unsuited to bourgeois life. He also feels uncomfortable with Henriette's change of heart as she may be doing it for all the wrong reasons. Herr Vogel seems to assist the soul mates to be together more. The regimentation of their lives is captured by the rigid,tableaux-like cinematography, with pastel colouration. Henriette submits to a weasel of a man who wants her only as a sounding board to his own life- philosophy.The film succeeds as a farce set up with authentic period detail with references to the effects of the French Revolution, creeping under your skin like Heinrich does under Henriette's.The climatic death scene is blunt,sad and horrifying, but works.It leaves a shadow in your mind long after.

Austrian screenwriter and director Jessica Hausner's fourth feature film which she wrote, is inspired by an article she came across regarding the life of a renowned German 18th and 19th century poet named Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811). It premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the 67th Cannes International Film Festival in 2014, was shot on locations in Germany and Luxembourg and is an Austria-Germany-Luxembourg co-production which was produced by producers Martin Gschlacht, Antonin Svoboda, Bruno Wagner, Bady Minck, Alexander Dumreicher-Ivanceanu and Philippe Bober. It tells the story about a German pianist in her early thirties named Henriette Vogel who lives in Berlin, Germany during the Kingdom of Prussia (1525-1947) with her husband named Friedrich, their daughter named Páuline and live-in maid, who wouldn't dare to demand freedom as she considers herself as the property of her spouse, and who one day is presented with a rather peculiar proposition from a German lyricist in his early thirties who stopped loving his fiancée when she wouldn't comply with his theoretically developed wish. Distinctly and precisely directed by Austrian filmmaker Jessica Hausner, this quietly paced fictional tale which is narrated by and interchangeably and simultaneously from the protagonists' viewpoints, draws a perspicaciously philosophical, retrospectively reflective and eloquently bilateral portrayal of a Protestant Christian writer, formerly imprisoned by the French military, who perpetually and eagerly as if a hypochondriac insists on gaining the compassion of Miss Vogel and his friend named Marie. While notable for its distinctly atmospheric milieu depictions, reverent cinematography by cinematographer Martin Gschlacht, production design by production designer Katharina Wöppermann and costume design by costume designer Tanja Hausner, this dialog-driven and narrative-driven story about the egotistic, ridiculous, misunderstood and ironic aspects of a four letter word, densely and non-moralistically though virtuously reconstructs real events in accordance with the vision of the filmmaker, who made her statement six years ago, rather than in accordance with biographical facts, puts fiction and documentary up against each other and situates characters in restricted roles which makes it apparent that their every attempt at freeing themselves only leads them to the realization of what a seven letter word really is.Made almost a century after the birth of the first Austrian woman to obtain a medical degree named Rosa Welt-Straus (1856-1938), forty-two-years after an Austrian-Jewish leader named Ernestine von Fürt (1877-1956) became the leader of the Union of Hebrew women for equal rights in Eretz Israel and twenty-four years before the son of a King named Christian VII (1749-1808) and a Queen named Caroline Mathilde (1751-1777) of Denmark and Norway wrote: "No one but we alone can be able to judge what is in the state and the people's true gain and best interest.", this master-act and midgame which plays on the supposed subconscious horrifying imagination of the audience, creates a rhythmically playful dance through radically and acutely staged perspectives which underlines its cinematic language, communicates by intention or not that poetry is anything but an innocent escapist game for children, youth or adults, that there exists a not self-evident though perceptible relation between mental illness and amour, places its empathy with the people who are carved into unquestioned and dictatorial conventions, depicts an exceptionally diverse study of character and contains some musical passages. This darkly and abruptly humorous fairytale and unconventional character piece which is set in Germany in the early 19th century during the Romantic era (1800-1850) after the French Revolution and where roleplaying is done in a desensitizing manner which has historic undertones and emphasizes the actors' functions as modeled actors, laws were being reinforced and a well-mannered and articulate thirty-four-year-old brother and son applies his intellect and the fanciest words of his racing vocabulary to persuade those he has set his mind on to join him in his irrational plot, is impelled and reinforced by its cogent narrative structure, subtle character development, rhythmic continuity, masterful dialog, advanced realism, the ever so gentle and self-explanatory comment by Henriette: "It is strange to have an illness that may not be one. A figment of the imagination which is as real as reality." by Marie: "…to see the pleasant side of…" and the outstandingly cinematic acting performances by German actor Christian Friedel and German actresses Birthe Schnöink and Sandra Hüller. A cinematographically picturesque narrative feature.

"Would you care to die with me?" It's a question you'd perhaps expect to hear being uttered from one of Hollywood's more overused basement sets, rather than that of a stately German home during dinner. Austrian writer/ director Jessica Hausner's sixth feature is a study of death as an act of love in the midst of a Prussian Empire on the cusp of French-inspired political and social reformation. Set between 1810 and 1811, the film follows a young romantic poet, Heimlich (Christian Friedel), as he seeks out a partner for what he believes is a perfect act of love and the solution to his melancholic woes; a shared death. After his cousin spurns his fatalistic advances, Heimlich turns his attentions to Henriette (Birte Schnoeik), the wife of a business associate and a woman diagnosed with a terminal condition. What transpires is a drawn out courtship, with an underlying will-they-won't- they murder-suicide pact theme.Far from the dashing romantic image a period poet might evoke, Friedel's Heimlich moves awkwardly through the picture as a skulking, slightly greasy weirdo. He's the Seventeenth Century love child of Max Schrek's Nosferatu and How I Met Your Mother's Ted Mosby, desperately searching for his elusive dream girl. Pursuing his prospective suitors and explaining his desire for this mutual suicide with all the cold, Germanic logic of a Kraftwerk track, "First I will shoot you and then myself". Still in Hausner's depiction of upper-middle class Prussian life, it's perhaps not inconceivable that his offer is met with more of a curious enthusiasm than it is with laughter and a one-way trip to the gallows.There's a visually cruel symmetry to the set design. The rooms at a glance are large and grand, but their interiors sparse and utilitarian. Carpets, drapes and walls are covered with maddeningly geometric, repetitive patterns and each static shot looks like the kind of uninspired Seventeenth Century painting that one might find adorning a Twentieth Century biscuit tin. The colour palate is oddly muted. The characters move in precise, robotic motions, which seem designed to minimise the energy spent. Indeed, the stately group dance in the third act seems to ironically be the least choreographed in the entire film. It's as if this world, one where the sole form of entertainment is gathering around a piano to listen to a child hammer out macabre songs, would be so repressively dull as to make the offer of a late afternoon fatality a tantalising thought. Indeed, while planning their final moments, Henriette seems to have the sheepish smile of a young woman who's been flaunting her ankles all over Berlin. That's almost all the facial emotion that we see throughout the entire ninety-six minutes.Ultimately, it's not all that easy to ascertain what Hausner's sterile slice of period drama is trying to convey. It could be that death, like social change is inevitable, so we might as well enjoy it, rather than hide from it in denial. However, it's a little hard to walk away thinking that the past would have been anything but a torturous purgatory, of which death would have been the kindest release. Perhaps mercifully, the viewers' time there is, in cinematic terms, rather brief.

I saw this film last night, at a festival - on a big screen. It was worth every penny.It's a story based on a German poet's - Heinrich von Kleist - life. I am not enough familiar with his personal life to know how accurately it depicted it, but as a story, it worked. The interesting twist is that most of the story actually focuses on Henriette, the woman Heinrich pursues with an interesting plan. To commit suicide together.The movie is not fast paced, it's a lot of dialogue and not very much comic relief (but there is some). So I wouldn't recommend it to people who only watch comedies and action packed films. But if you like human dramas, this may be a movie for you. The story was compelling (even if ridiculous at points, but that was on purpose), the acting was super well done - especially Henriette, her husband Vogel and Heinrich, and the cinematography was beautiful--some spoilers ahead -- Henriette is a married woman, with a daughter (and the cutest dog), but that doesn't stop depressed Heinrich from calling her out on her loneliness and suggesting to her that they commit suicide together, and thus end their pain. At first, Henriette is very much against this idea. But when she finds out she's suffering from an illness and overhears the doctor tell her husband that her days are numbered - she decides to agree.Throughout the movie, Heinrich is shown to be in love with a different woman, his cousin Marie, who rejected his suicide plan. And though he finds another partner he claims to love, he still wishes it will be Marie dying by his side. This makes it all so much more painful - since the movie depicts Henriette as the main character, we grow to love her (at least I did. Birte Schnoeink the actress was magnificent). Not only is she going to die, but Heinrich prefers someone else would die with him. It makes her death seem even more unnecessary. Henriette's husband, who starts out depicted as a plain man without much to offer - a smart man, but not a very emotional one - grows over the course of the 90 minutes and becomes lovable, and shows his caring more and more. It's not that the character changes, so much as he's given a chance to show all his depth and love. Another sympathetic character is their poor daughter, who is never left out of the loop when the doctor is around and is aware of the whole looming death.The cinematography was done in a masterful fashion. In addition to being beautiful and colorful, the set, the design, the costumes were all very precise. Nothing was out of place, not even an inch. And the photography brought it all together, brought it to life.--MAJOR SPOILERS-- This is not a passionate affair movie, with lots of steamy scenes. In fact, there is not even a kiss. It's a subtle film, and it's very much in sync with the era it's depicting - social conventions, propriety...The death scene was as painful as can be. Such an emotional punch. But not graphic.