Land life is not just idyllic: ordering the fields, the care of the animals and regular milking of the dairy cows are hard work – despite the general perception, it is not only taken over by men. Women are also involved in the farms – the young filmmaker Justine Bauer knows that from her own childhood. She grew up on an ostrich farm in the Großforst residential area in the Hohenlohe region in Baden-Württemberg, before she only studied the art college for media in Cologne after graduation after graduation in Leipzig.
In her debut film “Milk into the fire“She returns to the place of her childhood – and relies on the greatest possible authenticity: Large parts of the cast consist of amateur actors on site, for the role of grandmother, she occupies her own grandma – and the Hohenloh dialect, which is used for the region, is spoken. While the purely female narrative perspective and the naturalistic approach are convincing, the formal strict also reveals its Dark sides.
Life, Marlies (Johanna Wonek) and her daughters
It is summer, and the young Katinka (Karolin Nothacker) has just decided to continue the parents' farm in the next generation. But apart from swimming in the river with her sisters and girlfriend Anna (Paula Bullinger), the moments to enjoy the land idyll are rare. Katinka's disillusioned mother Marlies (Johanna Wonek) thinks about hiring in a supermarket because of the better earning opportunities, the desperate neighbor (Martin Bauer) draws attention to the decline in milk prices with several protests. And then Anna is also unintentionally pregnant …
Director and screenwriter Justine Bauer is a strong formal will to design. So she not only shot her film in close full screen format (4: 3), she always relies on long settings and unusual perspectives. The opening scene is already demanding: For four minutes, one of the girls swings from the lower edge of the picture with a swing across a river, while an off-voice reports on rural traditions.
Many interesting approaches, but no narrative flow
During the dialect talks about poor tomato harvesting and decaying milk prices or a trip through a former farm site, which has now given way to a new development area with a home, always shimmers through how much farm life is endangered today. The amateur actresses around Karolin Nothacker and their sisters score with undisguised naturalness and thus even steal the show to the seasoned actress Johanna Wonek (“Sisi & I”). And yet: In the bulky and tough string of sometimes documentary everyday scenes from country life, a real narrative flow never wants to appear.
The award -winning drama, which is shown in heated colors, is held together from the allegorical handling of the topic of reproduction. The sporadically set in voiceover compares the pressing of straw through agricultural machinery with a birth process, the girls stick to the leg as a fertility symbol, and cat bobbies are inserted into a sack and rolled into the river in a ton. In the end, a lama is neutered in a minute -long setting – and the cut tester is accused of eating the dog. In addition, Justine Bauer does not give good hair to the few male protagonists: the father of Anna's unborn child – and potential heritage of the farm – is a perplexed school boy, and the neighbor first calls the local press for staged photos for a protest, before taking his own life on a foreign property. “Milk into the fire” not only calculates with the romantic ideas of country life – but also with the rural patriarchy. With its many dramaturgically often isolated individual scenes, however, he also leaves a little perplexed.
Conclusion: With a refreshingly feminist perspective, Justine Bauer sensitizes the farming needs in the Hohenlohe region. However, the debut unit is somewhat tough due to its formal rigor.