ARD series-“Marzahn Mon Amour”: Sitting once on the throne

It is always very annoying to attribute properties just because they belong to a certain group. It’s very easy to do it. But probably this series would probably have never been turned, this book, which is based on it, could never be written if the Ossis were not as they are. Not penetratingly wounded, not per se a troublemaker and somehow not heard the shot. No, the series adaptation of “Marzahn Mon Amour” is a tribute to the Ossi beyond the western cliché – as it is probably really.

Although director Clara Zoe My-Linh from Arnim, who has just saved the call of German television entertainment internationally, has nothing to do with such attributions because of her age, she again proves a fascinating talent for figure drawing with the adaptation of “Marzahn Mon Amour”. Of course, this is also due to the excellent book template Katja Oskamps.

The panopticon of characters that open here is Famos, and their stories are sometimes tragic, sometimes strange, embittered or loving. Mostly everything at the same time.

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Kathi (as always Famos unpretentious Jördi’s drive) is in her mid -40s and her writer career never really got going. After countless rejected manuscripts, the rent still has to be paid and it decides to start as a podiatrist in a cosmetic studio on the Marzahner Promenade in the Berlin district of the same name. The panopticon of figures that open here is famos, and their stories are sometimes tragic, sometimes strange, embittered or touching. Mostly everything at the same time.

In order to get the stories, Kathi doesn’t have to do anything, except to take off their socks, gently let their feet slide into a water bath, the “throne”, as she calls the cosmetic chair. She fails to do every moral assessment, everything sounds honestly benevolently, no matter how presumptuous her customers behave, how sad or repulsive their stories may be. Everyone gets talking, because here people sit in front of her, “sometimes talking to anyone who speaks to us when they come to the studio for days. Every touch and happy are grateful in this place where they are not treated like the nation’s full idiots «(A quote from the book that is addressed in the series from the OFF).

One could easily say that it is about people who are less fame in today’s world and certainly no recognition (except, they are good for a social drama report that is suspected of journalist prices or a “Stern TV” documentary about the low instincts of prefabricated bins), and that would also be right. But it works, and maybe you only see it if you can do something yourself with the GDR, including being east German. It is about how to express the word “Püppi” (nickname for your own wife) (it has nothing to do with sexism, but is in the way it is said that it is an old -fashioned East Berlin way of naming a favorite person), it is about the loss of security and orientation, about weekly cribs and how they shape the relationship with the mother.

Kathi discusses everything with her customers (they are mostly women, which makes the series worth seeing again, because here two leper television characters get a leading role together: old women) and it is about the arduous struggle to rebuild a life. The characters that Kathi pedicates on their throne are by no means lovable, many are hard or close to them, in the worst case, self -righteous to cover the lack of human warmth.

Nevertheless, the series would be wrong if they would be labeled as nostalgic, transfiguring or somehow exclusively East German. Because all the characters and their stories play in the here and now. The fact that the towels in the “Beauty Oasis” cost an extra cost and 1.50 euros for coffee for unappealing customers have nothing to do with the GDR. The peppered monologue that Kathi hits her ex-husband Heiko on the subject of the invisibility of women beyond 40 and her role for men’s soul hygiene has to do with everything, but nothing with the east.

You can tell that the director of Arnim spent a lot of time in Marzahn, a lot must have spoken to Katja Oskamp about details (we see all kinds of feet, whether we want it or not). Jördi’s Triebel grew up in the Marzahn of the 80s.

The “Berliner Zeitung” asked various marzahn*whether they would know the series or you would look at. Most older people replied that they no longer look away, because nothing exciting is coming anyway, and if so, they didn’t want to be presented again from above. And that is exactly what “Marzan Mon Amour” doesn’t do.

Why the ARD has buried the series on a transmitter on a transmitter at 11:50 p.m., and at this time all six episodes hurled away, will remain its secret forever. For those who are familiar with the Internet, this pearl of the near-Dran counting is available in the media library.

“Marzahn Mon Amour”, Friday, March 21, 11:50 p.m., ARD or in the ARD media library