A Fading Man

When her ex-husband reappears, now suffering from dementia and having forgotten their divorce, Hanne’s orderly life with partner Bernd is gently upended. A tender, witty debut from Welf Reinhart, where new possibilities for love and for life emerge as a second spring for three adults.

Imagine this: the man you once married, and later divorced for entirely good reasons, suddenly reappears in your life – and cannot remember that you ever separated. This is what happens when Kurt visits his ex-wife Hanne, who now lives with her partner Bernd. Kurt, it turns out, is living with dementia. The three try to make the best of an awkward situation, which becomes even more tangled when efforts to return him to his care home falter, and his daughter proves difficult to reach.

What begins as an involuntary arrangement takes an unexpected turn when Hanne admits to herself that she still loves both men, and Kurt and Bernd, in their own ways, are willing to explore what that might mean. Slowly but with unmistakable intensity, they start to behave as if they were in the spring of their lives rather than its late autumn. With A Fading Man, Welf Reinhart achieves an unusual feat in his debut feature. Part drama, part comedy, part reverie, the film walks a remarkably fine tonal line. Together with his trio of actors, Reinhart opens up that rare space where different lives briefly seem possible.

– Vanja Kaludjercic

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