Director: Stefan Krohmer
Year Released: 2006
Rating: 3.0
Psychosexual goings-on among the bourgeoisie in Germany: a family and their 16-year-old son's pre-teen girlfriend stay at their summer home - everyone, including the next door neighbor, is interested in the pre-teen girl except the son, whose sexual energy is focused on war strategies. Lots going on beneath the surface and in both the smallest and largest of gestures: mother Mirjam (Martin Gedeck) 'competes' with surrogate daughter Livia (Svea Lohde) for the attentions of neighbor Bill (Robert Seelinger), Dad (Peter Davor) takes special care to carry a drunk Livia to her bed (getting a chance to caress her face), Bill admits he's in love with Livia to break off his relations with Mirjam, Mirjam 'accidentally' kills off her competition during a routine sailing outing and then resumes Livia's place as Bill's lover. I'll grant it's a little too Freudian - and the pre-teen's death is basically a screenwriter's contrivance (almost - but not quite - as glaring as Breillat's dispatching the pretty daughter in Fat Girl) - but at the very least it avoids being about Pedohysteria and more about age disparity (notice at the dinner party how old Mirjam's mother is and how old her new lover is) and the complexity of familial relationships.
