SOMEDAY WE’LL TELL EACH OTHER EVERYTHING – Review by Valerie Kalfrin
An aimless young woman in rural Germany takes up with a man twice her age in the languid romance Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything.
Based on the novel of the same name by Daniela Krien, the film largely focuses on two farms in 1990s East Germany, after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Travel to West Germany’s cities is now a car ride away, but Maria (Marlene Burow, In a Land That No Longer Exists) largely stays on the farm where she lives with her boyfriend, Johannes (Cedric Eich), and his family.
His parents took her in after her parents divorced and her mother lost her job. The young couple has the farmhouse’s attic to themselves, where 18-year-old Maria reads Dostoyevsky instead of going to school. His mother, Marianne (Silke Bodenbender), likes Maria, but like others in their rural community, she doesn’t hold any illusions that Maria will stay. She’s like a pretty bird, muses Henner (Felix Kramer, Black Box), the family’s 40-year-old neighbor, a loner who likes to read a lot, too.
Maria and Henner soon fall into a clandestine affair, which for all the sex and nudity doesn’t generate much heat. Henner at times is rough with her, choking her and bruising her neck while at other times showing tenderness.
The film’s pacing often drags, with long takes and golden lighting to depict the bucolic lifestyle. A visit from Johannes’s uncle, long estranged from the rest of the family because of the country’s division, adds some political context, but with Maria sneaking off to be with Henner, the visit contributes little to her character journey.
That said, director Emily Atef (More Than Ever), who co-wrote the screenplay with Krien, captures that on-the-cusp anticipation of young adulthood, such as when Johannes and Maria drive to Munich, playing Depeche Mode in the car with the windows down as miles of fields roll by. In the city, they’re in awe of tech like a front-loading CD player, and Johannes buys an expensive camera with his graduation money, testing an interest in photography.
With wistful eyes, Burow also conveys Maria’s ambivalence. One minute, she tells Johannes she wishes she had everything figured out like he does. The next, she tells Henner she loves him and wants to stay with him, something he questions as too good to be true. He’s older and set in his ways; she’s bound to change, he thinks, something their own jaunt to the city reveals.
Still, at two hours and nine minutes, the film feels at least ten minutes too long, lacking in dramatic tension and ending on an uncertain note. Overall, Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything doesn’t say much.
