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VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2013 - Die Frau des Polizisten, by Philip Gröning - First look review

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2013 - Die Frau des Polizisten, by Philip Gröning - First look review

Simone Spoladori (August 30, 2013)

From the director of The Great Silence, a very good start to the main competition.

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The German  director Philip Gröning is one of the protagonists of the first day of the main competition, after yesterday's opening showcase with Gravity.

Eight years after "The Great Silence," Gröning comes back to Venice with his new film, "The Police Officer's Wife" (Die Frau des Polizisten), a 175 minute family drama that describes rather effectively the delicate psychological mechanisms affecting a woman abused by her husband. 

A policeman absorbs evil at work discharging it later at home. His wife tries to prevent the child from experiencing domestic violence, but she remains psychologically crushed by it.
The story is intense, hard and claustrophobic, almost entirely set within the family's house, with no soundtrack and no music. This is a very radical mise en scène, perfectly conveying the progressive destruction of a family, which at first glance seemed perfect. 
Gröning has a very precise and extreme vision of cinema and also has a great talent and he knows it. The result is that sometimes he lingers on an excess of complacency quite useless, and reduntant such as the  suffocating division into chapters (over 60!). That looks like an authorial affectation without a cause.
However, it's a very good start to the main competition.

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