User Reviews

"Maikäfer flieg" or "Fly Away Home" is an Austrian German-language movie (some Russian too) from 2016, so neither a really new nor old film, and this one was directed by Mirjam Unger, her second full feature live action movie after quite a while seince the first that was packed with short films and documentaries. Unger is also one of the writers who adapted the book the film is based on into the final screenplay. I am more of a German film buff than an Austrian, but still I would have expected the subject here to attract more known names really in terms of the cast. Ursula Strauss is among Austria's most successful female actors these days and maybe Krista Stadler has also enjoyed a long and prolific career too, but that is really all that comes to mind here. The main character is played by Zita Gaier, a child actress, and we will see how far she can go in her career in the coming decades or if she will perhaps pursue a different career path away from the film industry like so many before her. The movie runs for almost 110 minutes, the 100 it says here on imdb is not correct. It is set in the year 1945, so you could almost call it a post-war movie, not a war movie anymore and the action takes place in Vienna that is in ruins after the allied attacks and we follow a family and see how they try to survive and also struggle with each other, not just the influence from outside. Sadly, I must say that I was not particularly impressed by this film. Of course it is not easy to come up with new interesting stuff and films about a subject that has been deal with on thousands of occasions, but several filmmakers in recent years have proved that it is possible, Unger not so much here. It is never really an interesting character study or a touching story of survival and the film feels longer than it actually is. The title is not the greatest choice either. It almost has something pretentious to it honestly with the reference to the song the girls sings very early on and also probably to the girl herself, but yeah story-wise it made virtually no impact and should have been named differently.

As for the child actress, I am not too sure what to say about her except that she is fairly cute. I don't think she was particularly good, which was not only her fault though, but several times also had to do with how her lines were written and they just did not feel accurate for a girl her age looking at how she reacted in certain situations. One example would be when she is no longer willing to take the blame and unleashes against her father that he was the one killing Soviets and how she has to pay for it despite being innocent and then still gets constantly bullied by her mother mostly. The latter is definitely not a contender for mother of the year looking at how she behaves towards her daughter. But she acts a bit in accordance with the motto that nobody is allowed to harm her daughter but herself because whenever there is a danger from outside, then we see her trying to protect her. This danger from outside is in 99% of the cases Russian soldiers invading the city and females have to be particularly careful here with these around. The film is definitely not trying to make anythigng seem more harmless than it actually was. It is a pretty tough watchat times, frequently rather because of emotional violence than physical violence really. Bit yeah, sadly there is nothing in these a bit under 2 hours that makes the movie standout from other mediocre stuff from this genre or anything that really stays memorable. I have not read the book that this film is based on I must say, so not sure if the problem lies in the original material or the adaptation. It is also not a failure by any means, but it seems as if everybody is held back by the overwhelming mediocrity here and that also includes actress Strauss who I generally like and deem talented, but here she also brings nothing new that she hasn't shown in other works and frequently better. So while the film is not a failure either, the best idea is probably to watch something else instead. I give it a thumbs-down.