"Die Frau des Polizisten" is certainly a strange film. It runs for roughly three hours and includes really a lot of very short chapters. Sometimes, we only see a man for a couple seconds and nothing really happens. And there is no dialog either. Or in another chapter an injured deer is shot by a police officer. Most of the chapters are as random as it gets. In one of them, we see nothing but somebody cutting onions for a meal. Half of them have no relationship to the main plot at all. The result is that I thought the film drags really a lot and it could have been kept at two hours or less and nothing of value would have been lost.
Most of the film we see interactions between the two lead characters, said police officer and his wife and frequently their little kid is involved too. The policeman seems to be violent and struggles hard to find happiness and as a result of that he frequently beats his wife. There are roughly 60 chapters and the start and ending intertitle of each chapter last for 15 seconds both taken together, so 15 minutes or more of the film are just intertitles. The writing is not great either. The dialogs don't seem authentic all the time. In one scene, he calls her the basis of his logistics. That was especially bad.
The only position from which I could approve of this film is the issue of domestic violence and how a kid reacts to that. Otherwise, this movie was a failed attempt by writer and director Philip Gröning at being different and artistic. The two lead performances weren't particularly memorable either. Not recommended, even if some film festivals will disagree with me.
Most of the film we see interactions between the two lead characters, said police officer and his wife and frequently their little kid is involved too. The policeman seems to be violent and struggles hard to find happiness and as a result of that he frequently beats his wife. There are roughly 60 chapters and the start and ending intertitle of each chapter last for 15 seconds both taken together, so 15 minutes or more of the film are just intertitles. The writing is not great either. The dialogs don't seem authentic all the time. In one scene, he calls her the basis of his logistics. That was especially bad.
The only position from which I could approve of this film is the issue of domestic violence and how a kid reacts to that. Otherwise, this movie was a failed attempt by writer and director Philip Gröning at being different and artistic. The two lead performances weren't particularly memorable either. Not recommended, even if some film festivals will disagree with me.
