3 DAYS IN QUIBERON – Review by MaryAnn Johanson

My film education continues: I had never heard of Austrian actress Romy Schneider before 3 Days in Quiberon crossed my radar, but now I know that she was one of the biggest European film stars of the mid 20th century, with a long string of prominent roles that made her a household name and recognizable on the street in Germany and France, and also subject to endless and often malicious gossip in the press. In this raw and uneasy film, German writer-director Emily Atef paints of portrait of tortured celebrity, extrapolating from Schneider’s last interview in 1981, just a year before her apparently unexplained death at age only 43.

As Schneider (a riveting Marie Bäumer) is detoxing and trying to relax at a luxury spa hotel on the Brittany coast, with the support of her close friend, Hilde Fritsch (Birgit Minichmayr), Stern magazine journalist Michael Jürgs (Robert Gwisdek) and photographer Robert Lebeck (Charly Hübner) arrive. She doesn’t often speak to the press, but she has invited them for what they hope will be an intimate conversation, and turns out to be, as Jürgs confides later to his editor over the phone, the most open she’s ever been with a reporter. Continue reading…