User Reviews

"Wellness für Paare" is a German television film from 2016 that turned out a pretty positive surprise for me. It runs for 90 minutes and includes quite an illustrious cast. It is about five couples spending some time at a wellness hotel and this is combined with couples therapy. From these 10 actors, only one female actor (probably because she is more known in Poland) was not known to me and the nine others all enjoy successful and prolific careers here in Germany. This is quite something for a small screen release. The writer and director is prolific actor Jan Georg Schütte and after attracting Senta Berger and Mario Adorf for his previous project, a senior version of "Shoppen", the stars lined up for his newest project here apparently. I must say I enjoyed the watch. It is basically 5 short films turned into one long movie as the couples have almost no connections or screen time together, but the final meal scene took away a bit from that impression, so I'd say well done there too. The focus during the sessions is on pregnancy, family life, cheating, boring everyday life, spicing up old habits and more. It is basically the usual relationship stuff. The couples range between 35 and 60 years of age I would say, so there are no teenagers in here and also no couples that have been married for 50 years, even if boring routine is a major aspect in several of the relationships. I personally liked Sebastian Blomberg the best this time. His mannerisms always remind me a bit of Christoph Waltz and I can see him having an international breakthrough too in the next years. Martin Brambach was pretty good once again too and he and his film partner were the only ones who got awards attention for their portrayals. Brambach even took home a German Television Award (for this one and another film) and I like that as he is one of my favorite German actors. Has been for a while actually. So to those who got dumbed down by theatrical films here in Germany that are a mix of comedy and drama (Schweighöfer, M'Barek, Schweiger perhaps too with his recent stuff) I say them if they actually prefer not to be hold down by low-quality filmmaking but watch something with true authenticity and depth, this film is very much worth watching. Of course not all of the sessions and relationships were 100% convincing (like the struggles in Mädel's Sarnau's were fixed really quickly, too quickly for my taste), but this was also not necessary for this film to become a success. I also liked the ending because it really did not fake an unrealistically happy ending for everybody involved, but shows us that there are still several issues that will play a major role in the days and weeks and maybe years after the sessions. I applaud everybody working on this film. Well done!