"Was bleibt" or "Home for the Weekend" is a German full feature film from 2012, so this one has its 5th anniversary this year. The director here is Hans-Christian Schmid and as a pretty rare occurrence he is not the writer this time. The writer of these 85 minutes is Bernd Lange and he has worked with Schmid for a long time of course, so it's nothing too new really as he has been Schmid's co-writer on several occasions. The cast includes a couple familiar faces for German film buffs like Lars Eidinger and Corinna Harfouch, probably the most known ones. Two sons reunite with their parents on the occasion of celebrating their father's retirement and more secrets get revealed. Their mother has stopped taking their pills, which is apparently one of the core plot themes of the film, but I cannot say I was too convinced by it sadly. There are other fairly dramatic developments as well, for example involving another romantic relationship involving the father. But of course, the sons also get their fair share. I think this film had some good moments overall and I cannot really say why it felt to me that it did not work out really convincingly overall, especially as I liked most of Schmid's other stuff that I have seen. I guess one reason may be Eidinger. I don't think he is a bad actor, but he has a tendency to give extremely similar performances in all his movies and I just don't feel that he can really lose himself in a role, but always sort of delivers the same routine. The consequence is that he really needs the perfect character for him to truly make an impact instead of adapting himself to fit each character. On a more positive note, I found Ernst Stötzner really good and he was surely deserving of his German Film Award nomination. He'd also have made an okay winner that year. They surely went for the wrong choice by choosing the old Gwisdek, even if I loved "A Coffee in Berlin". But back to this movie here. Sometimes it feels that the filmmaker somehow realized himself halfway into the movie that it was pretty slow, dragging and not really too interesting as the second half of the film is suddenly packed with one spectacular thing happening after the next. But this is just as bad as the first half, only for exactly the opposite reasons. A mix between the two would have been great. And maybe a better lead actor and also somebody other than the forgettable Zimmler for one of the major supporting characters. The way, it turned out eventually I cannot recommend seeing it. Thumbs down.
Review of Home for the Weekend
