“Four minus three,” there’s just one left, is what you’d want to answer naively when you hear the deceptively harmless title of Barbara Pachl-Eberhart’s autobiographical story for the first time. But there is not only more to it, but also something unimaginable: “Four minus three” stands for a family, the parents and two children, of which within a moment only the mother is left. An unrestricted railway crossing and suddenly there is just endless suffering – and the question of how life can continue.
The Viennese author Pachl-Eberhart wrote down her experiences – for self-therapy as well as to help – and in 2010 her report became a bestseller. 15 years later, the Salzburg director Adrian Goiginger (“The Fox”) filmed their story – and with “Four Minus Three” he created an incredibly honest, brilliantly acted, painfully touching piece of cinema that consistently avoids calendar sayings and truisms of all kinds. It certainly takes effort to subject yourself to such an experience of grief, but it's worth it – so much so.
When Barbara (Valerie Pachner) sees the clown Heli (Robert Stadlober) performing on the street, she spontaneously speaks to him afterwards.
“Four minus three” weaves two strands together: After failing the entrance exam at drama school, Barbara (Valerie Pachner) discovers the street clown Heli (Robert Stadlober) on the market square – and spontaneously begins training as his co-clown. The professional partnership quickly becomes more, and the small family grows twice. But it's not all sunshine and roses, financially the shoe is definitely tight (even if clowns are known to wear size 95). Heli insists on his strong artistic ambitions, while Barbara, although not a huge, but at least regular income, contributes as a hospital clown.
At the same time, Barbara hears on the radio about a terrible crash at a railroad crossing. Shortly afterwards she receives a call from her best friend telling her not to drive to the scene of the accident. The sad certainty follows quickly: Heli died on site, the children are in a coma, but neither of them will wake up. Even if she organizes the funeral as a clown party against the wishes of her devout mother-in-law, Barbara is left with nothing afterwards. Nobody even wants to use her as a hospital clown anymore, because how is she supposed to bring joy to children when everyone knows that she herself has lost her entire family?
Valerie Pachner is a revelation
The Austrian Valerie Pachner celebrated her final cinema breakthrough in 2019 with the Berlinale competition entry “The Ground Beneath Her Feet” – but this is now being torn away from her character. The film and the leading actress alike avoid using trivial means to press the tear duct. On the contrary, they allow a lot of ambivalence before and after the fatal accident, which gives the tragic event a very special authenticity – and gives the audience an unbridled punch in the pit of the stomach: This means that arguments before the accident are not simply left out…
… and then Barbara sinks so deeply into a wishful delusion triggered by a kindergarten picture that she even sleeps with strange men in parking lots in order to give birth to her daughter, who is supposedly waiting for her on a rainbow. It would also have been easy to portray the mother-in-law, who insists on having the most classic funeral possible, as an antagonist and to celebrate the sudden clown appearance as a cathartic triumph over her philistinism. But fortunately “four minus three” has nothing to do with such rather simple reflexes.
As Heidi Appenzeller, she doesn't just comfort children in the hospital. When she no longer knows what to do with her despair, Barbara takes refuge in her clown alter ego.
Like the book, the film not only goes where it hurts (which it does almost everywhere here anyway), but also where it gets unpleasant, perhaps even a little disturbing (for example, when Barbara takes refuge in her Swiss-German clown fictional character Heidi Appenzeller during a date with a TV mountain doctor played by Hanno Koffler). Grief can sometimes be a messy affair – and director Goiginger, as in his alcoholic drama “The Best of All Worlds”, fortunately not only has the necessary maturity, but also no false shyness.
However, that doesn't mean that watching the film is torture. Quite the opposite: Of course, it's often difficult enough to get yourself out of the sofa to go to the cinema – and then a drama with such a difficult topic. But it is precisely because of his brutal honesty that even the more optimistic moments have a completely different effect. Yes, the rug is pulled out from under the audience's feet for two hours – but in the end they regain some of their faith in humanity. Very big cinema.
Conclusion: There will certainly be quite a few people who more or less cry through the two hours of “Four minus three” – but it is absolutely worth it.
We saw “Four Minus Three” at the Berlinale 2026, where the film celebrated its world premiere in the Panorama section.