FREI NACH PLAN

Anne, a zany musician who’s permanently broke but brimming over with optimism, is the only one of three sisters who escaped from provincial Anhalt and got to know the world. With her mother’s round birthday coming up, she decides to pay a long overdue visit home. Inevitably, the buried, almost forgotten conflicts life return to the surface as soon as the family falls into the old roles. Anne is once again the black sheep of the family who knows she can always depend on her parents’ unshakeable pride in their daughter. Marianne is the jolly if slightly dull good girl who has a steady job and owns a house, apparently never put a foot wrong. The obsessively perfectionist Iris, by contrast, doesn’t even have time for a life of her own: she’s the housekeeper and nurse of their mother, whose moods and drinking the long-suffering daughter patiently endures. Before the birthday party can even begin, all kinds of chaotic problems have to be dealt with – and a few unpleasant truths need to be aired.

With lyrical travelling shots that revel in the illusory calm of village life the director delivers a family melodrama spiked with caustic humour. Thanks especially to the magnificent performances of the four female players, the sombre themes are presented with a buoyancy that permits the optimistic conclusion that things usually look worse than they actually are.