Film “Alte Liebe” by Andreas Dresen: Remembering together brings more than just discord

It's obvious why cinema prefers to tell about love between young people rather than between old people. It's not just that the former are conventionally the "prettier". One inevitably always imagines “old love” to be a bit boring. Well-rehearsed routines and harmonious coexistence and all that. Not exactly exciting story material, according to the common prejudice.

In contrast, the over-60 generation in Germany will soon make up a third of the total population. Senior topics sell. Elke Heidenreich's "Altern" was the best-selling book in 2024. Her semi-autobiographical book "Alte Liebe", written together with ex-husband Bernd Schroeder, not only became a bestseller in 2009, but also lived on for a long time thanks to numerous stage versions. Mariele Millowitsch and Walter Sittler are currently touring the country with it.

Andreas Dresen and his long-time screenwriter Laila Stieler were hired for the film version, a choice that makes perfect sense. You think of Dresen as a realism specialist who knows how to stage everyday life in its most ordinary everyday life with admirable tact, and Laila Stieler as the author who works with him and who avoids anything sensationalistic, even when it comes to big topics like in “Rabiye Kurnaz against George W. Bush” or the anti-fascist resistance of the “Red Orchestra” in “In Love, Your Hilde”.

“Old Love.” Director: Andreas Dresen. With Dagmar Manzel, Joachim Król and others Germany 2026, 110 min.

It is therefore not surprising that Stieler and Dresen have rewrote the template “from West to East”, but in doing so they evade all the topics that are currently being debated with great controversy in a smooth and gentle manner.

Dagmar Manzel and Joachim Król embody Lore and Harry, a couple of retirement age who can look back on four decades of marriage. Somewhere on the edge of eastern Berlin they live in a little house with a surprisingly large garden. While Harry has made planting it his life since his retirement, Lore thinks she can't give up her job in the district library because without her everything would collapse. In reality, it's probably the other way around, as film viewers soon realize.

The “love” between the two protagonists isn’t exactly the best at the beginning of the film. Harry wishes his wife would be more interested in him, Lore resents her husband for long-ago insults. They bicker and contradict each other as if on principle. When the invitation arrives from the adult daughter who wants to make a man from the West her third husband, they are united for a brief moment in their resentment. However, Lore quickly gives up her resistance and Harry maintains that he doesn't want to go to the celebration in Leipzig.

A cycle of seasons from spring to winter structures the film, which focuses entirely on Harry and Lore. Granddaughter Laura comes to visit during the summer holidays, but she barricades herself from her grandparents behind her Playstation. Christoph Hein and Clemens Meyer appear in slightly slapdash cameos as guests of Lore's district library. But only the scenes between the married couple have any dramatic weight.

Once again, Dresen's great art is evident here: by precisely staging even the smallest tasks, he succeeds in telling the story of the almost invisible externally, but internally essential development that Lore and Harry's relationship is going through this year. About how they find more affection and tenderness again from their routine of arguing and defending each other. And how remembering together no longer just reinforces old discord, but creates a new connection.

All of this is finely played - the material seems to be tailor-made for Manzel and Król - and brought to the screen in such an atmospheric way that it is touching without appearing kitschy.

At the same time, it seems like a missed opportunity. So although the cliché of the “rich Wessi” finds its way into the script, with a perfect reference to inherited wealth and the responsibility for laying off thousands of workers in the East, we learn next to nothing about Harry's and Lore's lives, which must have been permanently influenced by the upheavals of the transition, for better or for worse. Neither of them ever talk about how they experienced the transition from GDR to FRG, nor do they reflect on the fact that they apparently did very well with their house and garden and an amicable living.

In the conflict with the daughter, a lot is hinted at but never developed. Unlike all Dresen films to date, you leave this one wanting more specific, telling details.