I saw this last year at a screening by the Desert Film Society. Director/writer Chris Keaus shows promise in this, only his second film. The film is set in a German penitentiary and revolves around two central characters, Traude Krüger (Monica Bleibtreau),an elderly spinster who is a piano teacher at the prison and working long past her retirement age and Jenny Von Loeben (Hannah Herzsprung). a young woman serving time on a murder conviction. Jenny is also a a naturally gifted pianist under her gruff demeanor who Krüger wants to tame long enough to enter her in a piano competition to give a four minuter recital in a prestigious concert hall before an affluent audience. Krüger lives and teaches order and conformity and comes from a past where the Nazi's were about order and conformity in their world of fascism and she had to adapt to that world while suppressing her the non-conformity of her lesbianism. Jenny has a violent temper and comes from a world of childhood abuse and has lived a life of disorder and non-conformity while suppressing the order and conformity of her protégé talent. Jenny likes modern music and the modern rhythms and passion of the street and experimental music scene while Krüger hates modern music. Ironically the piece Krüger has chosen for Jenny's recital is by German composer Robert Schumann who's own approach to music incorporated rhythm that was considered daring for it's day. Director/writer Kraus may have thrown in another little ironic tie-in to Schumann where a guard at the prison has a young daughter named Clara who Krüger had no patience with because she wouldn't curtsy. Schumann's wife and great love of his life was named Clara. This is a film that keeps your interest throughout but the screenplay has lots of gaps and implausible scenarios and runs a little long but despite its flaws, the two fine acting performances by Bleibtreu and Herzsprung are certainly noteworthy and I would recommend the film and give it a 7.0 out of 10.

4 Minutes (2006)

This is the German "Four Minutes" and it's an intense look at a woman's prison and a prisoner who has a gift for playing piano. And then about an older woman who had some undisclosed issues in her past (during WWII) and is now steadfastly teaching piano in the prison. Music contests come along, and the inmate fights all the odds to compete.

That's the surface. Deeper and more interesting are the troubled psyches of the two leads, the younger woman vitriolic and intense (and quite believable),the older woman steely and cold and almost cruel. That they come to terms with one another is a given, sort of (that's what movies typically do),but how that turns on a couple of spectacular (and a little sensationalist) twists at the ends is pretty rousing.

There is great music, conflicts with Nazi and racist overtones, lesbianism, and of course, a rough and tumble prison world in contemporary Germany. That's enough for any good film. It makes it moving and the high stakes are somehow justified by the intense acting. It breaks conventions within a larger cliché of the heroine struggling against the odds. It has an odd and disturbing element about innocence, and this leads further into the psychology of the inmate, but it isn't quite resolved.

But it's all really interesting and provocative. You will probably cheer a little by the end, too.

"Vier Minuten" is probably the most known work from German writer and director Chris Kraus. At the German Film Awards, it won Best Picture (over Academy award winner "Die Fälscher),gave the late Monica Bleibtreu (Moritz' mother) a Best Actress win and scored nominations for Kraus' writing and directing as well as Herzsprung's acting. She lost to Bleibtreu, but won in the supporting category for another movie. I thought Herzsprung played very well here, so I am a bit surprised and disappointed about the fact that she played mostly cheesy parts in weak romance movies in recent years. Time for something more challenging again.

There were a few issues I had with this movie, like that Bleibtreu's character does not want to help initially, but after Herzsprung's character violently assaults a police officer she suddenly wants? Also I felt that Lesbian reference came out of nowhere a bit only to make the movie maybe more interesting. Also the whole Nazi past and alcoholism references were maybe a bit too much. It seems as if they tried to include so many baity aspects and then did not entirely elaborate on these. It's certainly not a film as important as it sees itself. The female prison inmates struggling with each other was solid, one of the better parts of the film. Tabatabai does a good job with her minor character.

Near the end of the movie, all the smaller characters are pretty much out of the picture and it's all about the two protagonists which I liked, even if the late Sven Pippig plays an interesting character who is actually a nice person, but gets drawn a bit towards the dark side due to the back lash he keeps experiencing in his job and even on national television. The film ends with the four minutes described int he title which are the big piano performance from Herzsprung's character before she gets arrested on stage.

As a whole, I felt this was a decent movie, but nowhere near as good as all the awards it won and was nominated for would make you think. It's a bit predictable (prison girl becomes music superstar despite all the obstacles) and the final piano scene felt like an extract from a weak American Idol episode to me where everybody is silent after the performance and then breaks into loud applause. The whole piano performance did not feel as emotional and free-breaking to me as I wished it could have been to be the true highlight of the movie as the makers intended it to. Nonetheless, it's slightly under two hours of solid entertainment and I recommend it, especially if you are interested in German cinema. On a random final side-note, I felt this movie looked a lot older than from 2006, maybe 90s or even 80s, but that helped the prison atmosphere maybe.