Munich Film Festival Review: Parents (2013)

Cast: Clara Lago, Christiane Paul, Jannis Niewöhner
Director: Robert Thalheim
Country: Germany
Genre: Comedy

Editor’s Notes: The following article is part of our coverage of the Munich International Film Festival. For more information on the festival visit filmfest-muenchen.de and follow the Munich International Film Festival on Twitter at @filmfestmunich.

Managing a family with kids always requires some patience and tolerance. If both parents are working, then it becomes a tad difficult for them in bringing up their kids as they must balance both family and work. And if the family is caught under a tangle of problems, then it goes up to the breaking of the relationship between the members. Robert Thalheim’s latest film Parents deals with this issue, which is prevalent among the working class families throughout the world.

The greatest aspect of the film is the acting of Christine and how well she presents herself to her daughters, in a patient and affectionate manner. As the narrative of the film spans a week, it makes the audience engage with the happenings of the family each day and make us constantly guess as to what kind of problems line up for them in the coming days.

Konrad (Charly Hübner) is a responsible husband, who takes care of his two daughters Emma and Käthe and also runs the household, while his wife, Christine (Christiane Paul) is an anesthetist who works at a hospital. At the end of a party on a weekend, Konrad decides to continue his rehearsals for his latest stage play at the beginning of the week. Both Christine and Konrad agree to it and are happy to leave the kids to the new au-pair, Isabel (Clara Lago), who hails from Argentina. The rest of the film is about how the lives of family members change in a time span of a week in an emotional and soulful way.

It becomes quite heart-breaking for the kids to accept the fact that Konrad — after being a close and affectionate parent for his two daughters — will not be available in the house for a whole day, like before. Just when Konrad decides to get ready for his first day of rehearsal, Isabel faints in the house and we get to know from Käthe that Isabel is pregnant (as she peeked into Isabel’s handbag once and found her pregnancy test kit). Both Konrad and Christine are in a state of shock, and confused as to whether to inform the au-pair agency or to not disclose it to anyone. But still, they continue with their plans of working with Konrad and decide to take Isabel to the clinic and return to his rehearsal.

On the first day, Konrad’s daughters remain stubborn in sticking with him and also ask him whether they can accompany him to the stage play. Short of alternatives, Konrad takes them to his workplace. Over the course of the day, he can’t concentrate on his work, as the senior guy in the troupe always has antagonistic views against his adaptation of the work and added to that are the mischievous activities of Emma and Käthe driving him crazy. Finally, he succeeds a day in his work with fewer problems.

In the following days, the situation becomes worse for Konrad in looking after Emma, Käthe and now Isabel along with his work. So he takes the drastic step of informing his wife that he will be staying in the theatre for some days and that Christine should take care of the children. The rest of the week involves Christine running the family in spite of several issues in her profession.

The two daughters, Emma and Käthe, give a candid and innocent performance. Emma, being a naughty small kid makes us smile with her habit of growing pets, grabbing chocolates and disturbing everyone in the family amidst worst circumstances. Käthe, who is about 10, is a stubborn and creative girl, who loves her father more than her mother. Even when both parents insist Käthe takes up the responsibility of looking after Emma, she refuses and insists that it’s not her job. Sometimes, Käthe looks more of a problem child to the couple when compared to Emma. At the end of the week, we will be amazed to see as to how well Käthe’s character has matured for the betterment of her family

Christine, being a workaholic for a long time, suddenly realizes that she has to spend more time with the family, and with Konrad not being there, she decides to take some time off. Sometimes, we have the feeling that Konrad is too cowardly to balance his family and work, or we have to pity the fact that he may not have prepared mentally for this string of issues storming his family.

This film has the power to reach to all classes of people who find it difficult in looking after their kids. And the nice aspect is that it is pretty much relevant to the modern lifestyle of people who need to earn as well as run their family. Robert Thalheim himself had to encounter these problems to an extent that this film looks like a semi-autobiographical account of the struggles and sacrifices of being parents.

The greatest aspect of the film is the acting of Christine and how well she presents herself to her daughters, in a patient and affectionate manner. As the narrative of the film spans a week, it makes the audience engage with the happenings of the family each day and make us constantly guess as to what kind of problems line up for them in the coming days. This film has the power to reach to all classes of people who find it difficult in looking after their kids. And the nice aspect is that it is pretty much relevant to the modern lifestyle of people who need to earn as well as run their family. Robert Thalheim himself had to encounter these problems to an extent that this film looks like a semi-autobiographical account of the struggles and sacrifices of being parents. When everything’s said and done, troubles are bound to happen among couples and their kids, time and again. But the best part of living as a family is managing those problems intelligently and hence leading life happily ever after.

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Venkateshwaran Ganesh

Staff Film Critic. Visit my personal blog at framesofeternity.wordpress.com

Venkatesh is a cinephile, who always try to relate some of the moments of his everyday life with the moving pictures. Though he started a bit late in exploring world cinema, directors like Kubrick, Bresson, Kieslowski, Kurosawa, Satyajit Ray made him stay in this wonderful world of cinema for years to come. Even in the midst of an apocalypse, he tweets @venkkeyy about films. And you can check his not so active blog http://framesofeternity.wordpress.com/ and motivate him time and again.

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