Gisela is a young wife and mother, living in a working class German Housing Scheme. She is a supermarket cashier, her husband a delivery driver. The marriage is stale but together they are working their way up into the middle class.
George and Gisela evidently knew each other as teenagers. They live on the same scheme and George introduces her to his friend Paul. There is instant mutual attraction. Gisela spontaneously goes to a party that they invite her to that evening, where she and Paul begin a sexual relationship. It's clear that they are not going to live happily ever after, but director Isabelle Stever's subtle presentation of people looking for solace and finding torment in each other is compulsive.
I saw Gisela at the 2007 Jeonju Film Festival (South Korea), where it was screened on the recommendation of German film-maker Harun Faroki. It was by far my favourite film of those I managed to see at this excellent and diverse Festival.
The protagonists are all in their late twenties, and I think that it's a key point in understanding them. They seem to be at a stage where they're coming to realize that the old tricks aren't working anymore.
George is languishing in his own self-destructive cycle of alcohol, taunting violence and seedy sexual gratification. He yearns for Gisela, drawn to all the qualities she has that he knows mean he will never have her; her goodness, warmth, tenderness. He initially finds comfort in the conviction that she will never be unfaithful to her husband, and increasingly as the relationship between she and Paul becomes manifest, poorly disguises his desire behind insults, feigned indifference and aggression.
At first I really didn't buy Stefan Rudolf, who plays George. I thought that he didn't seem charismatic enough to be able to get away with all the harassment and loutishness he enacts on the local women and his friends, but as the film progressed, I began to think of this as intentional, the point being that he ISN'T charismatic enough, or at least, isn't anymore and the Jack-the-Lad stunts aren't paying off the way they might once have done. He repeatedly claims this of Gisela, that she was once hot, but is now fat, old and ugly. But it's an old playground trick, is it not, to hide your own insecurities by projecting them onto other people.
Paul's character is not developed much. What does he do? Where is he from? How does he know George? Does he really not like music? It doesn't matter; enough is said through the relationship. What we know about his past? Only that he seems used to harvesting these attractions. He tries to be macho about Gisela, he professes that they screw, she leaves, but the sex is becoming more intimate, more mutually fulfilling. His character? His alternate pride in having a deeper connection to a woman than George is capable of having, and confusion about this deeper connection paint a picture of a clever but shallow man struggling to understand.
Despite their crudity or lack of depth, both George and Paul are sensitive enough to see the quiet beauty in Gisela, while coarser men may think her plain. Although they discuss her frumpiness at length, they are genuinely aroused by her and they are both unsettled by the effect she has on them. While Paul's ardor can be directed into the relationship itself, George's unconsummated love fuels his self-destructive drive, pushing him into increasingly reckless and violent situations including challenging Gisela's husband to confront what his wife is not trying particularly hard to hide.
Gisela, as with the other characters, is explained in context without the extraneous information that a less elegant film-maker would chuck in. Anne Weinknecht as Gisela has the quiet beauty that moves the story. She says without speaking that with Paul she is having one last fight against the mundanity of her married life, one that she hopes but never really expects to win.
George and Gisela evidently knew each other as teenagers. They live on the same scheme and George introduces her to his friend Paul. There is instant mutual attraction. Gisela spontaneously goes to a party that they invite her to that evening, where she and Paul begin a sexual relationship. It's clear that they are not going to live happily ever after, but director Isabelle Stever's subtle presentation of people looking for solace and finding torment in each other is compulsive.
I saw Gisela at the 2007 Jeonju Film Festival (South Korea), where it was screened on the recommendation of German film-maker Harun Faroki. It was by far my favourite film of those I managed to see at this excellent and diverse Festival.
The protagonists are all in their late twenties, and I think that it's a key point in understanding them. They seem to be at a stage where they're coming to realize that the old tricks aren't working anymore.
George is languishing in his own self-destructive cycle of alcohol, taunting violence and seedy sexual gratification. He yearns for Gisela, drawn to all the qualities she has that he knows mean he will never have her; her goodness, warmth, tenderness. He initially finds comfort in the conviction that she will never be unfaithful to her husband, and increasingly as the relationship between she and Paul becomes manifest, poorly disguises his desire behind insults, feigned indifference and aggression.
At first I really didn't buy Stefan Rudolf, who plays George. I thought that he didn't seem charismatic enough to be able to get away with all the harassment and loutishness he enacts on the local women and his friends, but as the film progressed, I began to think of this as intentional, the point being that he ISN'T charismatic enough, or at least, isn't anymore and the Jack-the-Lad stunts aren't paying off the way they might once have done. He repeatedly claims this of Gisela, that she was once hot, but is now fat, old and ugly. But it's an old playground trick, is it not, to hide your own insecurities by projecting them onto other people.
Paul's character is not developed much. What does he do? Where is he from? How does he know George? Does he really not like music? It doesn't matter; enough is said through the relationship. What we know about his past? Only that he seems used to harvesting these attractions. He tries to be macho about Gisela, he professes that they screw, she leaves, but the sex is becoming more intimate, more mutually fulfilling. His character? His alternate pride in having a deeper connection to a woman than George is capable of having, and confusion about this deeper connection paint a picture of a clever but shallow man struggling to understand.
Despite their crudity or lack of depth, both George and Paul are sensitive enough to see the quiet beauty in Gisela, while coarser men may think her plain. Although they discuss her frumpiness at length, they are genuinely aroused by her and they are both unsettled by the effect she has on them. While Paul's ardor can be directed into the relationship itself, George's unconsummated love fuels his self-destructive drive, pushing him into increasingly reckless and violent situations including challenging Gisela's husband to confront what his wife is not trying particularly hard to hide.
Gisela, as with the other characters, is explained in context without the extraneous information that a less elegant film-maker would chuck in. Anne Weinknecht as Gisela has the quiet beauty that moves the story. She says without speaking that with Paul she is having one last fight against the mundanity of her married life, one that she hopes but never really expects to win.
