Film “Lies About My Mother” | Too much woman

Because the father gets nowhere, the culprit is quickly found: his completely normal wife. Photo: © TOBIS Film / Frank Dick's Brigitte diet. Celery diet Food combining diet. Color diet: In the 1980s, many mothers in West Germany struggled with this madness. Her everyday life was characterized by patriarchal role models, marital rape only became a punishable offense in 1997, women were considered “bad mothers” if they wanted to go back to work quickly after giving birth, and in many cases her husband patronized her and restricted her – with reference to her dear family. The husband often still managed the money and made all the important decisions. In most households, housework and child-rearing were exclusively the responsibility of the woman.

Daniela Dröscher's mother experienced a similar experience, about whom she writes in her novel of the same name, "Lies About My Mother." The autofictional book rightly made it onto the shortlist for the German Book Prize in 2022.

Werner is firmly convinced that his career is stagnating because he doesn't have a "presentable woman."

Rosalie Thomass and her partner Aaron Lehmann now take on this disturbing material, which shows how a husband presumes to have control over his wife and her body, so much so that she almost breaks. Thomass not only plays Cornelia, but also wrote the script - as before for the couple's joint comedy "Hunting Season."

It tells the story of Cornelia, who, in the opinion of her husband Werner (Golo Euler), weighs too many kilos, but also from the perspective of seven-year-old Ela (Elise Lindner) - the camera usually takes her perspective. Occasionally, Ela breaks the fourth wall and, as her adult self, recounts the systemic violence her mother experienced. The book template proceeds in a similar way. Ela comments that a woman's pregnancy still leads to structural disadvantage today. Or that the global economy would collapse if so many women didn't feel uncomfortable in their bodies.

The family lives in a small town in West Germany. Werner is firmly convinced that his career is stagnating because he doesn't have a "presentable woman." He self-righteously projects all his inferiority complexes onto Cornelia. He is constantly looking for slim women and soon treats himself to a lover, while Cornelia keeps the shop together and, to make matters worse, has to deal with her disapproving mother-in-law (Juliane Köhler), who lives in the same house.

Werner also makes it impossible for her to go back to work, even though she has a promising offer from her former boss. The second child will soon be on the way and Cornelia also has to look after her demented mother after her father died. That sounds like normal Germany in the 1980s, the stuffy era of Helmut Kohl's intellectual and moral change.

Although the clever and headstrong Cornelia defends herself wherever she can, she is unable to break out of her marriage for a long time and even has a gastric band inserted in order to finally lose weight.

How Thomass embodies this fun-loving woman who is humiliated, harassed and monitored by her husband is deeply touching. Werner often films her with a Super 8 camera, through whose viewfinder we occasionally look - and makes derogatory comments about her appearance.

Memories of mothers and grandmothers with monastery melissa spirit in the back of the kitchen cupboard, of sad looks, hardened bodies, overcome the audience - and anger about all the unlived lives of an entire generation of women is rekindled. Nevertheless, a touch of warm-hearted comedy always flows through the film, especially in the most shocking moments, when Cornelia cleverly defends herself against her tyrannical husband or, in a sensational scene, forces her husband to do a seductive dance in front of everyone, in which you don't want to miss a pound of her body.

Little Ela is torn between the accusations of her father, who mercilessly indoctrinates her, and her love for her mother. In the meantime, she even asks her mother to finally lose weight. Your own body image will be damaged by this influence, as Dröscher impressively explains in her autofictional follow-up novel “Young Woman with a Cat”.

Even when Cornelia's mother leaves her a small fortune, she, as a child of her time, leaves the money to her husband and hopes that a new house, a new car and other prestigious objects will finally bring peace to their relationship. Eventually she developed painful fibromyalgia, which is now also referred to as “inwardly crying depression”.

Instead of intermittent fasting and fat removal injections, it's worth taking a look back, because today women's bodies are commented on not only by those around them, but even millions of times on social media. Body positivity was yesterday. Add to this the global backlash of right-wing radical forces that have always wanted to control the female body - this film is not a look back, but a wake-up call.

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