User Reviews

"Picknick im Schnee", which means "Picnic in the snow", is a German television film from 1999. I don't know if what I just stated is also the international title because imdb does not list one. Or only the Hungarian title. However, I am pretty surre that this movie here was not exactly shown really many times in English-speaking countries. Here in Germany, however, it is still one more than 20 years after its original release, which is quite some time. Not sure why though because it is not particularly good, even if it is still better than most of the other stuff shown on national television nowadays, especially by ARD and its smaller stations. Maybe another reason is that the cast we have here also includes some familiar faces. Matthias habich turned 81 two days ago and he is still acting in 2021. Same applies to Michael Kind, even if he is much younger and not as famous as Habich. But nonetheless a really prolific actor, even if his role in this film here is very small. As for the females, not too much to say about Barbara Auer. Of course, many people still know her and recpgnize her name immediately. Chiara Schoras probably still has more screen time here than Auer and she was pretty young still when this film got made and I kinda like her, although I won't even try to deny that it may have to do more with her looks than range. This is also confirmed by the fact that she did not manage a great and really successful career (on the big screen for example too) in the last two decades. Still makes me a bit sad because she was alright here. I even kinda accepted that stupid make-up she wears in her very first scene because it was her. But I will get to the specific contents later on. Let's just stay with the key elements from the production here. The director is Tomy Wigand, who is almost 70 now, and after seeing this film here still pretty early in his career and also some of the stuff he did later on, I don't see much talent. I guess he never really managed to get beyond the "Verbotene Liebe" level with which he started his career. For some of his works, he just had a lot of money at his disposal it seems and maybe that is why they did not turn out really weak like some of the others. But actually creative achievements I do not see in his body of work. The writer is Martin Rauhaus, a bit younger than his director, but also acttive since the early 1990s already apparently. Really active in fact. Very prolific filmmaker in the last 30 years, but also there many really weak projects in his filmography to be honest and to me it seems that the best he has come up with is still only mediocre compared to actually solid screenplays from other filmmaker. This man is the epitome of quantity over quality. But he made a living out of that it seems, so good for him. Not good for the audiences though.

Now a few words on this film here in particular: We have the story of a man who has to take huge blows professionally and also about his private life. A bit of a big coincidence that this takes place at the exact same time, but oh well. The next coincidence was really too much though. The moment he rents a hotel room to jump out of the window and commit suicide, a young woman has the exact same plan in the room nearby. And as if that was not ridiculous enough already and also that of course both survive, they are also accidentally about to fall out of the window, but manage to get in again. It seems their dedication to let go and simply fall was really gone that moment already. Fairly quickly. Honestly, this background reminded me a bit of a more recent Josef Hader film. That one is better. You may want to watch that one instead of this one here, although I suppose you have seen this one here already if you came here and have also read until this point. I can only say that I do not agree one bit with the other reviewer who gave this a perfect rating. Come on! Anyway, as for Auer's character, the cheating wife, she searches for her husband for pretty much the entire movie as she is worried something bad could happen to him. Which is kinda true in fact given the premise. I think Auer was too popular and famous back then to not appear again after the cheating inclusions early on, so she kinda gets into an argument with the younger man she has been with and searches for her "true love". Also explains why she is still included on the poster here on imdb. Very purple poster with a reference to how this film is set on New Year's Eve. The good thing is that tehy did not turn the relationship between the two lost protagonist into a romance thingey, but Schoras' character there had her own unhappy romantic background anyway. No need to fall for a 60-year-old, even if he saved her life. By the way, even if I love snow as I stated in the title of my review, I do not really like the movie title here too much. The snow inclusions were way too scarce to name it like that and let's not even talk about the picnic mention. An entirely different title would have been a better choice. They always could have taken something like "Johannes and Frankie" or so, even if it's not really inspired either. But at least, it is accurate. Still interesting to see that back then, at the end of the old millennium, snow in Berlin before the new year was still a thing. Not happening these days anymore really and don't even get me started on snow for Christmas. A bit sad. Okay sorry, I am drifting away now, so back to the movie. Not too much to say anyway. I don't think it is a really bad film or anything, but still too weak for a positive recommendation, especially because here they were really going for real emotion repeatedly and you could see that they were takin this film seriously as a character study. Zero comedy to tne entire thing. Maybe the weakest or most bizarre scene was this club visit from the two. I mean it was strange enough already that they even go there at their most depressed states (as were were supposed to believe), but the camera work there on the DJ, on the characters, was just totally bizarre. Everything done oh so right in Collateral from five years later was done wrong here. Pretty clumsy to be honest. Also, why is Schoras not on the poster? Just a random thought crossing my mind right now, sorry. Because I constantly see it here while writing. So yeah, all in all the okay scenes here (like the one with the two cops, okay that was mildly funny) are simply not frequent enough, not even for a relatively short duration of under 1.5 hours. Maybe if you really love Habich, who is the undisputed key character here and not one of the two females, then you can give it a go, but even he has probably many other films in his body of work you want to check out. Then again, it's probably difficult anyway to get a hand on this movie so many years later. I was pretty surprised it was on national television today again and probably next time will take many months, if not years, for another occasion to see it. Still, you're not missing much luckily. Thumbs down.