Die innere Sicherheit

There are films with more ‘waterfront’ shots, yet this powerful film fits in better thematically with the programme than many films in which water is more dominant. Jeanne is a teenager who grew up along the beaches of Portugal. Her German parents are former political activists who are wanted for terrorism. They live underground. Jeanne knows nothing but the continuously secretive and distrustful behaviour of her parents. One day her parents decide to travel from Le Havre to Sao Paulo, to lead an ordinary legal life in Brazil. From port to port across a sea of hope. But as Klaus, an old friend of Jeanne’s parents, tries to explain to her in the film, the metaphorical sea can assume many shapes. Klaus tells Jeanne about the American writer Herman Melville who describes the temptations and the fate of the navigator of metaphorical seas in his famous book Moby Dick. Then Jeanne’s parents have to return to Germany by force of circumstances, an anxious and repressive Germany that is hunting illegal immigrants. Jeanne falls in love. Her contact with the ordinary outside world threatens the paranoid house of cards of her parents. They will never be able to make the sea voyage to Brazil. Leading an ordinary life turns out to be asking a little too much. (GjZ)