"Women are still looking for the alpha animal"
Nicolette Krebitz has submitted her second feature film after her directorial debut "Jeans". "The heart is a dark forest" tells the story of a man (Devid Striesow) who leads a double life, and a woman (Nina Hoss) who breaks it when she learns about it.
Thomas does not just have a loverwith whom he sometimes secretly descends into a hotel. But he leads the same life he leads with Marie, once again in copy? with another woman (Franziska Petri) and another child. As that flies, everything begins to dissipate and ends so brutally that it would provide the perfect headline for the tabloid press.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com employee Monika Wesseling spoke with Nicolette Krebitz and Nina Hoss on the occasion of the film premiere about male alpha animals, double lives and the status of women in our society.
Nicolette Krebitz (35) is herself the mother of a son and leads with her friend, the journalist Moritz von Uslar, a weekend pendulum relationship. Nina Hoss is currently working with British music producer Alex Silva (42), who lives in London, but now wants to make Berlin his first home and rebuilds an attic with Nina Hoss in Prenzlauer Berg.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: Why did you dig so deep into the tragedy box, Mrs. Krebitz?
Nicolette Krebitz: I had this story in my head: A story in which suddenly everything is different from what you always believed and that messes up your whole life. Of course, this double life is a nightmare situation driven to extremes. It's really about interchangeability. A woman can not have a second family at the same time. That starts with the not to be concealed pregnancy. That's a tangible difference between a man and a woman. This difference is also responsible, for example, for women with a completely different claim to start a family than men. You can not repeat that endlessly.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: Why should a man build a second, almost identical family life? Some men are already overwhelmed with one.
Nicolette Krebitz: That happened to him. He had a lover, slept with her, she is pregnant. Then he once built a beautiful bookshelf, it has become good, he just builds it again. During my research, I found out that the families of men who lead double lives are often very similar. It's not that they have a big blonde wife and a little brunette here, but they are often very similar constellations. They do not try to balance the deficit they have with one and the other. They just need more love.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: Ms. Hoss, how does Marie react when she learns of her husband's double life?
Nina Hoss: She wonders: where does that come from? And then she meets her father and you get word that he's the one she's working on. I know an incredible number of women who feel that way. The fall into schemata, because they still have something to clarify with their father. They choose men who are like their fathers. We also educate men on certain behaviors. Or one is too weak to counter that.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: Children and family happiness are currently being glorified in many books (Eva Herman, Frank Schirrmacher). The state wants more children. Can one understand the film as a counter position to it?
Nina Hoss: When you're in your thirties, being a mother is a never ending quest. As a woman, you then have to see how you get this under one roof with your plans and career. This question is also the film. There are women who have a terribly bad conscience because they work. Marie, on the other hand, gives up everything for the family.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: Do you find that old-fashioned?
Nina Hoss: Marie's mistake is that she blames her husband for what she has decided for herself. Then you should rather say as a woman:? Take? the children, I can not do it alone. I need support.? Women tend to say, "I do? beautiful.? You would have to say more often, "Do? times!?
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: So Marie is to blame for her misery?
Nina Hoss: It's guilty because there are always two who put themselves in such a situation. She chose this life, perhaps only to portray this changing reproach. It's so handy to say, "I had to give up my job." But maybe she was also afraid of her career.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: Ms. Krebitz, do you see Marie as a victim of selfish men?
Nicolette Krebitz: I've always tried to say: It's her life, it's her choice, her chaos. She made that herself in the end. It's often harder to forgive yourself than some moron.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: What blame does Marie have on your view?
Nicolette Krebitz: Marie chose her husband from the point of view: "You are great, you are now the father of my children." She has not paid any special attention to his signals on this topic or even brutally overlooked them. From the age of thirty, many women suddenly feel an insane time pressure, but still having to have children. There are the finer points on the track.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: Ms. Hoss, the film provides intense insights into motherhood. How has it become noticeable to you that a woman is directing?
Nina Hoss: I really practiced how to take a child up properly, how to take it right out of the swing. At first I did that very carefully, but then I learned that you have to access - zack - because as a mother you do not have time. You have to do a lot: Now I'll do the porridge, then the diapers, then this and that, and I practiced that until it had the appropriate course. Whether a male director would have demanded that of me, I do not know. There are also phenomenal women's understanding among the directors. The whole story is already told that she wears a woman's handwriting. It is very well described what women have to deal with if they get involved with family. With what constraints and misunderstandings they have to fight. Also the isolation under which Marie suffers.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: Does the movie compare to today's men?
Nina Hoss: I would not want to understand the movie as a male charge. When a woman like Marie walks around as a walking charge, things rock up. Thomas and you can not get out because there is no communication between them. The floor is already gone, because there are only reproaches in the relationship. So one of them sheds off one, the other withdraws until an event makes everything collapse.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: Are women still really into such selfish men as Thomas?
Nicolette Krebitz: Women are still looking for the man who can chase away the wolves. Our life situation has completely changed in the last fifty years. Women are fully employed and usually contribute half of their livelihood. This is also expected from the state. Hardly a family can afford to live only on the money the man earns. Apart from the fact that most couples do not want such a life. In parallel to the job, the woman has to deal with household and children. While the claim to women has changed radically, her "prey scheme" has remained the same. Many women do not look at the male choice: What do I need for a man for my life? Instinctively they are still looking for the leader and not for the one who supports them in what is required of them today.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: So in your opinion women prefer the discontinued model Alphatier. But are there any contemporary men at all?
Nicolette Krebitz: Of course there are those. Not so many maybe. They have a responsible relationship. Everything is shared "fifty-fifty" and both are equally happy or overwhelmed. Women need to sharpen their eyes for those skilled and choose them. It is interesting to see why, in evolutionary terms, the desire of women does not adapt to their present needs. If women have become fighters themselves, why not look for a man at home who can take care of them?
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: Ms. Hoss, Marie becomes Medea at the end of the film. Is not that terribly meaningless?
Nina Hoss: By killing her children, she takes everything from the children's father, thereby drawing attention to her value as a mother. Because children can only get the man through the woman. If she takes his children, then all his happiness, his family, his reproduction are gone. Even his future is taken away from him. But she also becomes Medea because she simply fails to do what she is asked to do, namely, to persevere and keep going.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: Now you are blond. Why are you wearing Marie's hair brunette?
Nina Hoss: Sometimes a blond gets in the way because it's more than a hair color. Already for? Yella? I dyed my hair. You can not sit in a bank in offices and be blonde. Then you'll be right in this pin-up drawer. With a brunette this has a very different seriousness. It is also overlooked faster. This does not work for blond. Blond is never gone because it's so radiant. The fact that Marie is brunette, distracts nothing. She is just a woman who is at home like many others. Not very nice, not very bright. Just unpainted, very real and normal.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: What influence did the birth of your child have on the style of the film, Ms. Krebitz?
Nicolette Krebitz: My look at children, my love for them has become much bigger with my own child. I would never have staged the scenes with the children in the film without my own experiences and would not have enjoyed it that much.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: How do you cope with the double burden child and career?
Nicolette Krebitz: Let me quote Susan Sarandon: "I'm always tired !? Sometimes when you have kids and you work, you just have to look for work when the child is in bed or kindergarten. But my son is four now. The older he gets, the easier it gets.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: Does the division of labor work out with her boyfriend?
Nicolette Krebitz: Yes, very good. We work on it.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: Ms. Hoss, you're in your early thirties. Do you also plan to have children?
Nina Hoss: I want to have children. But I do not plan and do not put myself under pressure. I let the decision come to me.
The movie criticism of "The heart is a dark forest".
