Movie tip: The stranger in me

Rebecca desperately decides to escape to protect her child from herself.

Everything is different after birth

The tiny little baby peeks out of his round blue eyes as his mother slowly lifts her into the warm water. But it does not scream. No sound is heard. Not even when Rebecca (Susanne Wolff) keeps her son under water for a short moment.

Rebecca bathes her son. And he's tempted to drown him.

Julian (Johann von Bülow) and Rebecca are happily married and are looking forward to their first child together. But when this is born is the little creature of his mother totally alien. Rebecca does not manage to build a relationship with her child - and she suffers terribly. She feels watched by her son and turns him away in his cradle while she works. Once, before she gets on the bus alone, she leaves him at the door and drives away. Minutes later, she realizes that she has abandoned her child and runs back to him. On the idea that they are suffering from a disease, the so-called postpartum depressionshe could not suffer.

The escape

Julian does not know how to behave towards his wife.

Similarly, her husband: Julian considers Rebecca's growing indifference initially for laziness and asks her to help him more - after all, he works day and night to enable his family to have a good life. Unnoticed by all, Rebecca goes psychologically to the ground. On the day she has to catch herself trying to drown her child, she flees. In front of her. In front of her husband. For all those who keep asking her to, she must love her son unconditionally and be happy. Above all, however, Rebecca flees from her child in order to do no further harm to him.

Will Rebecca be able to build a relationship with her son?

The day of her escape marks the dawn of her long, tormenting healing process. Without her mother, who is the only person Rebecca wants to receive at her bedside, there is little hope for the young mother. The marriage to Julian, who now looks after the child alone, seems shattered.

The turning point

Rebecca does not manage to feel love for her child. It remains alien to her.

Rebecca goes into the hands of her with the help of her mother Psychotherapists. Together with this and together with a woman who has undergone the same as her, Rebecca tries by all means to feel love and affection for her son. Before her lies a cumbersome, tortuous path that will bring her to the very edge of her psychic and physical powers ...

Emily Atlef made a great movie with "The Stranger in Me", in which Susanne Wolff, actress at the Hamburg Thalia Theater, excels. The disease that affects many more women after birth than you think is been a taboo topic long enough. With impressive imagery and dramatic sobriety, the director and actress bring us closer to Rebecca's helpless abandonment. And encourage all concerned that it is one Way out of her illness gives.

The Stranger Beside Me (1995) (May 2024).