Die linkshändige Frau (1977)
69KDie linkshändige Frau: Directed by Peter Handke. With Edith Clever, Markus Mühleisen, Bruno Ganz, Michael Lonsdale. After returning from a business trip in Finland, Bruno (Bruno Ganz) find that his wife Marianne (Edith Clever) wants her husband to leave her alone with their son. A struggle with loneliness and adapting to the new situation ensues.
“Of the many films by Peter Handke (either alone or with his partner Wim Wenders) this may be the most appealing. It is also not recommended for modern viewers accustomed to Hollywoodu0026#39;s rhythm -it is long, slow paced and even difficult to follow sometimes. I strongly recommend viewers to read the book too, although they may not find too many additional clues there, for Handkeu0026#39;s style is to reflect the characteru0026#39;s actions rather than their thoughts (which, by the way, should be the perfect cinematic approach). Some people have wasted their time especulating about the womanu0026#39;s reasons to divorce her husband: the french essayist Gilles Lipovetsky even said that her u0026quot;lack of good reasonsu0026quot; is a sign of modern lifeu0026#39;s emptiness. In fact, we can not say she does not have reasons: only we are not allowed to see them on the screen. One might even think that Handke himself did not care to build the womanu0026#39;s inner thoughts (and if he did, he sure did not share them with us). The movie, and the book, are about communication between us, or at least this is one of its possible readings. Do we really know what is on other peopleu0026#39;s mind, even people real close to us? The answer is no: we can only talk of what they tell us, or what we might hint, but how many times had we been completely wrong about somebody? The movie defies the usual assumption of an omniscient camera: the woman would not share her thoughts with the viewers, and this leaves us with a sense of discomfort. We feel compelled to find motivations that are just not there. Just the fact that the movie makes us think about it would be enough to qualify it as a masterpiece.”
