User Reviews

"Mein langsames Leben" or "Passing Summer" is a German live action movie from 2001, so this one is approaching its 20th anniversary already and this was the 4th full feature film written and directed by Angela Schanelec. She is also a prolific actress by the way, also apepars in this one. Given the fact that the movie (according to imdb) did not score any awards attention at all, it was seen by quite a few people. The cast is probably not the reason. Yes you will find the likes of lead actress Lardi, Striesow, Vogler and the very young Maria Simon in here, but still the cast does not include too many famous German actors compared to most other films with the same rating count here on imdb. It is a pretty short movie, runs for approximately 80 minutes without credits and takes us into the life and world of Valerie, a woman around the age of 30 trying to make the right decisions in life or at least those decisions that feel right to, the most right lets say. This involves all kinds of aspects, general life choices about family, profession, friends and love relationships as well. The positive thing here is that the film feels mostly authentic like we are dealing with characters that could have existed in real life as well and you don't see them as performances really. Let me mention two moments I found somewhat memorable, such as when we have people talk about Laurel and Hardy whose comedy brought joy to millions, if not billions, of people and all they can come up with here really is the sad fact that the two are probably dead by now despite the conversation starting so well about who they prefer. The second reference for me is about the little girl who recognizes there is a woman living in an apartment without pictures and photos on the wall which she finds pretty sad and suggests to draw something for the tenant. A pretty depressing moment when a young girl has to make such a statement and the woman living there apparently couldn't care less. These scenes were decent, but unfortunately they did not make up for all the forgettable and weak moments on other occasions in my opinion. I don't need for a film to have constantly explosions and something big happening to enjoy it, on the contrary I prefer realism, but you also need to feel there is a reason and sense why this film was made and the people in here are depicted and their stories told to us. I was missing that reason for the most part unfortunately and that's why I must give the film a thumbs-down and a negative recommendation. It is a very dialogue-driven little movie, but the dialogues did not leave the lasting impression to me that they were going for. So my suggestion is to skip this mediocre character study and watch something else instead. I myself can only say I am glad it was this short. Skip it.