Berlinale: Province as the norm | nd-aktuell.de

If you look at the extensive filmography of the Austrian cabaret artist, author and actor Josef Hader, it is astonishing that “Andrea gets divorced” is only the multi-talent’s second directing work. He made his directorial debut, in which he also played the lead role, with “Wilde Maus”, the film was invited to compete at the Berlinale in 2017. With the big city grotesque about a washed-up music critic who, after being fired from the newspaper, buys the “Wilde Maus” ride in the Vienna Prater, Hader created an entertaining and intelligent social comedy that impressed with his typical laconic wit and could hardly be classified into any genre let.

In his new film he sets out to survey the Austrian province and also stars again. “Andrea gets divorced” takes place in a village in the so-called Weinviertel, which sounds more romantic than what Hader and his cameraman present to us. For them, the landscape becomes a mirror of provincial narrow-mindedness, and we know from various interviews that Hader once fled the provinces and is a committed city dweller.

However, Hader is not someone whose humor is based on making fun of or elevating others. His view of the province is not particularly loving, but neither is it (de)valuing or denouncing. That’s what Hader’s compatriot Ulrich Seidl is for, who uses more drastic means to expose the small-mindedness of his fellow human beings in his films. Hader’s view is that of the melancholic who has painfully accepted that the world is as it is, but does not accept it.

The province, as he and his cameraman Carsten Thiele show it, is the actual normal state in which, in purely numerical terms, most people live; It only seems bizarre from the perspective of the urban, metropolitan audience, who like to amuse themselves with the supposed idiots who didn’t make the jump. Or, as the police officer Georg (Thomas Schubert) says in the film about this – his – “shitty area”: ​​”The women are moving away and the men are becoming stranger and stranger.”

The eponymous village police officer Andrea (Birgit Minichmayr) also wants to leave, but only to St. Pölten, the nearest district town. From rain to rain, so to speak, because St. Pölten, as Hader sees the city, seems like the embodiment of the provincial wasteland in a small town format, complete with its architectural atrocities – or as Hader described it at the festival premiere: like Potsdamer Platz without the Berlinale, just smaller.

Andrea wants to escape her failed marriage and take up a new position in the city as a criminal inspector. Unfortunately, one night after a birthday party, she drunkenly runs over her husband on the country road and then, out of shock, commits a hit-and-run. And as a policewoman! To her own surprise, Franz Leitner, a religious teacher and dry alcoholic, believes he is the culprit and admits to the crime because he also ran over the – already dead – man. While Andrea tries to cover up all traces that lead to her, a fateful relationship develops with the teacher, who absolutely insists on atone for his alleged crime. He has already packed his suitcase for prison.

Of course, everything turns out completely differently in the end, but the sheer plot isn’t the most important thing for Hader anyway. The action is only the resonance space for the pointed dialogues and the often improvised play between the actors. As a skilled comedian, Hader has a natural home advantage here, and with his laconicism and his characteristic melancholic puppy-dog look, he carries the, well, not particularly complex plot. Hader fans get their money’s worth and there’s a lot to smile about.

However, if you imagine the film without him, who isn’t even the main character, there isn’t much left. Not that you wouldn’t like to watch Birgit Minichmayr and Thomas Schubert play as their police colleagues, but they aren’t particularly challenged. The big drama is canceled or is just a decoration for the comedy. In the end, the impression remains that Hader remained below his own potential this time.

“Andrea is getting a divorce”, Austria 2024. Director: Josef Hader; Book: Josef Hader, Florian Kloibhofer. With: Birgit Minichmayr, Josef Hader, Thomas Schubert, Robert Stadlober, Thomas Stipsits. 93 min. Date: February 24th, 6:30 p.m., Zoo-Palast 1.

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