Gisela is a young wife and mother, living in a working class German Housing Scheme. She is a supermarket cashier, her husband a delivery driver. The marriage is stale but together they are working their way up into the middle class. George and Gisela evidently knew each other as teenagers. They live on the same scheme and George introduces her to his friend Paul. There is instant mutual attraction. Gisela spontaneously goes to a party that they invite her to that evening, where she and Paul begin a sexual relationship.
Acting
Weinknecht's raw, unglamorous desperation in every frame.
Direction
Stever traps you in Gisela's suffocating world, no escape routes.
Director
Isabelle Stever
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Part of the 'Berlin School' movement—anti-romantic, working-class focused, deliberately unpretty. Stever was one of few women directors in this male-dominated scene.
Anne Weinknecht was a actual supermarket cashier when cast; Stever found her authenticity more compelling than trained actors.
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