Mimmi (19) is about to sit her exams. During a trip with the class to France, she spends the night with a man she met there. Back in Germany she finds out she is pregnant. She returns to Paris.The director Angela Schanelec, whose first feature Das Glück meiner Schwester was selected in 1996 for the Tiger Competition and won the German Film Critics Prize, herself says that the synopsis above is enough to describe the story of her film. Schanelec: ‘That may be a little strange, because the film is two hours long. But two hours isn’t a long time if you want to get to know someone. It took me ages to find a girl I wanted to look at, the way she walks down the street, how she does her exams, listens to music, wakes up in the morning. It was more important for me to want to understand her than really to understand.’Without the film getting boring for a moment, it may be a precondition that the viewer wants to share the director’s view – which is made a lot easier by the fantastic leading role played by Sophie Aigner. After Schanelec has chased any unwilling spectator from the cinema with a five-minute sleep scene, Mimmi is sure to become a familiar face. Even months later you can still feel an incredible sympathy with her loneliness and desire, her grumpiness and melancholy.
