Was ich von ihr weiß (2005) Reviews

• The story of Iris and Kati

  Horst_In_Translation2015-03-25

  "Was ich von ihr weiß" is a 10-year-old movie about a girl who gets back to her mother after her grandmother (custodian) dies. In these 90 minutes we see the two bonding and coming closer in building a mother-daughter relationship. However, sometimes it also looked more like a best-friends relationship. A lot of it had to do with building trust and no longer lying to the other (such as the mother does about her profession). The movie is directed by Maren-Kea Freese, so far her last project according to her filmography. Lead actresses Julia Richter and Alice Dwyer have been far more prolific on the other hand. This film is not too fast. It moves really slow and not much happens. But it does not hurt it at all. It's still a decent character study. The teacher did smartly in making the mother more likable to the audience by including parts of how she gives the documents back and how she decides to stop with pickpocketing. And Mark also really exists. A movie with an unlikeable lying criminal (with no positive features character-wise) in its center may have been hard to really appreciate. The film's ending is an interesting one. Even if getting to know her mother was only a chapter in Kati's life and not a lengthy one, it is a positive ending and you feel no sadness about the fact that the two split so quickly as it was not a failure and the two have a relationship now and will certainly see each other again in the near future. There were a couple more interesting scenes and subtle references such as Iris being in danger of becoming a mother like her mother. All in all, it's not a great movie by any means, but it's an entertaining one with depth and I recommend watching it. Random side-note: When she teaches her her profession, it reminded me a bit of "Leon - The Professional".

• Very good movie. I was pleasantly surprised.

  plasmawhore2007-06-16

  I didn't plan to see this film. I got an email from a friend who was going to see it at a film festival in Ludwigshafen, so I tagged along. I had no idea what it was going to be about and expected the worst. It was actually quite good. I don't know German well enough to tell if they are saying their lines correctly, but there were subtitles which helped me out a lot. The mom spoke very fast and I probably wouldn't have caught a lot of the dialogue otherwise. Besides the speech the acting was very good, although the characters could have smiled a bit more; I think there were a few scenes that this was possible. The daughter was very cute and they teased too much with showing her in underwear, but never anything more. Schade. I wasn't too thrilled with the ending. I don't know why the mom would encourage her daughter like that. Despite a few problems with and with a few camera angles(More Long shots to establish the scene please), I really liked this movie, especially in comparison to a lot of other low budget German films. I hope this gets a wide release. I could see it doing well in the US as well.