Halbe Treppe (Grill Point) | Review

Grill Point chronicles infidelity without the glossy overcoat.

Long hours at work and the basic routine of family life causes some wear and tear for two couples, -but what will become a simple evening between friends turns into more than what the foursome bargained for. In a drizzle-grey east-German city we have people who aren’t ‘living’ their lives-they are simply ‘existing’. A male radio host who gives his morning astrological predictions decides that his fate will take a different path, a listener agrees-she is the wife in the other couple- spreading her wings in the same way as her pet budgie who ventures out into the big world, she-the perfume saleslady married to a restaurant manager/cook with two kids looks to and married to an monotonous life.

Director Andrea Dresen’s Grill Point (German title: Hable Treppe) examines infidelity with the attitude that relationships aren’t dissolved or resolved with cut and paste solutions. In a non-tragic and un-fairy-tale form the film’s emotional layers brings the viewer on close. Reminiscent of a smaller German feature that I saw in last year’s festival-entitled Birthday, which also portrayed couples in the same sort of candid manner with a fly on the wall style of filmmaking accompanied by hand-held photography, it also included this testimonial sequences-where the characters address the camera with their affirmations, something that serves no purpose to either film…is there someone lucky enough to document their life crisis’s just at the right moment? The flipside of having unappealing visuals is having the digital camera close to the personage, who are living out their individual crisis.

Dresen’s winner of Berlin Film Festival’s Silver Bear is very much in the tone colour of blue-a common paradigm found in other German films that focus on human condition-thankfully you can almost laugh at the predicament that some of the characters find themselves in. Some smartly placed comic relief is found in this on going gag of a musician and his music that will simply not go away. Hable Treppe is a poignant drama, which takes its time to bring the unappealing characters into viewer favour. The humanity behind the life episodes brings it home no matter if you have had to life through such a dilemma or not, I liked the sequence where all the adults try to discuss what is happening as adults and how the conversation gets interrupted by kids waving their colored-crayoned portraits in the air. The film will not shake you to your core-but it breathes a breath of fresh air into such dramas.

MONTREAL WORLD FILM FESTIVAL

Rating 3 stars