Meret Becker: Single parents need support
In her new film "Flying Fish Must Go into the Sea" Meret Becker plays a chaotic, single mother of three children. Also private, the 43-year-old is a single parent.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: In the film, 15-year-old Nana says about her mother: "She is the most embarrassing figure in the universe and the most incompetent mother of all time." How do you see the Roberta who play them?
Meret Becker: She is a pretty imaginative woman. She has remained very childlike, but still has three children. In fact, she did not quite understand that she actually grew up. Everything is not so easy for her anymore. Also the men's world. She has always been very reduced to her feminine charms and used that. And that's exactly what she's flying on her nose now. Because she neglected everything else and never made herself independent. She has to learn that now, and very quickly because the youth welfare office is putting pressure on her.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: Has her 12-year-old daughter Lulu seen the movie?
Meret Becker: She thought he was great. But I also thought, hopefully my child is not mixed up now? and can keep the mother apart in the movie from her mother in life. There are certain parallels. I also sing like the Roberta. I am messy. I am a single parent. There are also outsiders who keep an eye on families like us and comment on it. Sometimes asked, sometimes unsolicited. But of course, my life is not nearly as disastrous as Roberta's in the movie. For a twelve-year-old, however, it may not be so easy to separate film and life.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: You are a chaotic?
Meret Becker: Chaos is known to be creative. And I'm such a person who can run the risk of getting bogged down. That's because I'm happy with things I touch - to a point. There are people who focus on one thing and can do it especially well. I'm one of the people who can do it all a bit.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: They play in the film and in the vaudeville, sing with their own band and for the sports fans Stiller you even brought a saw to sing.
Meret Becker: I have such an inner unrest. Maybe that's also a question of education, I was left alone a lot. As a child, I played the piano and could have become a pianist, but did not make it. I spent a lot of time in my room boasting and dreaming. I lose myself in things. For example, I trained Hoollahoop and Steppen and realized: I will not be a tap dancer or a hoollahoop artist - but I'll put it all together, into a multi-blupp. I use the music for that.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: You have been separated for eleven years from the father of your daughter Lulu, he is the guitarist of the "Einstürzende Neubauten". How do you feel about your role as a single parent?
Meret Becker: I think it's super important that the parents communicate, always in favor of the child. I think being single is about the hardest thing to do.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: You want to play all the roles of a family?
Meret Becker: You have to do it anyway. And then the outsiders come and hack around on the single parent. Whether it is the teachers, the kindergarten teachers, the friends, the relatives? some mosert always rum around and says: You can not do that! In the end, you do not even know what is and what should be. You totally get into Japsen.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: What would be the best?
Meret Becker: Take a deep breath. Or even if you do not know what to do, say to the child: I just do not know that, I have to think about it. If you do that in time, before anything gets out of hand, you are well served. And there I WANT MUCH more support from the outside. Especially since one must not forget: If you are alone with a child, you have to earn twice as much money, because the other falls away. But you only have half the time.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: As a mother, do you have a guilty conscience?
Meret Becker: There is this moral punishment that one has failed at the family and can not give his child a perfect world. It comes from the outside, but also from one's own. The bad conscience leads to the fact that one is unsure of his child. You give in here and there. And on mundane occasions, one thinks that the child suffers need, because one is single parent. Even though you know that a child does not have to suffer hardships when everyone gives them a sense of security.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: The bad conscience wears one down.
Meret Becker: And sometimes the environment thinks too little of the child. When you finish a child's mother, which makes her wrong again, that's terrible for the child.The mother is in self-doubt, the child feels that and finally it doubts his own mother. And with that the two sit alone.
The film "Flying fish must go into the sea"
Nana thinks she pulled the ass card under her mothers: such a lush single parent and then only men in the head? embarrassing! Especially when you are 15 years old, you prefer to wear dungarees as mini dresses and you have to take care of your siblings because your mother will not get it done. The debut of Güzin Kar is a coming-of-age story in a double sense: both Nana (Elisa Schlott) and her chubby mother (Meret Becker) will end up a bit more like her age: Roberta something adult, Nana something more child. Good direction, over-the-top images and a marvelously beguiling Meret Becker make "flying fish into the sea" entertaining and touching.
