My Brother, My Love – Glaubenberg (2017)

My Brother, My Love – Glaubenberg (2017)

I wanted to see a Swiss film for a change.
It had been a while.
So what happened? I stumbled across an incestuous film.
I thought “Well done!
And yet… I’d stumbled across a little gem!!!

For once I’m seeing a Swiss film without Melanie Winiger! 😉
Not that I don’t love her, but I had the impression that she was everywhere, at one time.
OK, “On your marks, get set, Charlie! (Achtung, Fertig, Charlie!)” was very nice, but let’s face it, “Breakout” wasn’t very good.
Anyway!

Here, it’s the young actress Zsofia Körös who is totally stunning and incredibly accurate in her performance. She had me riveted. And that’s dangerous, because you fall under the spell of a minor when you watch a film like this and you feel that the director is leading you by the baton and taking you where he wants you to go. I haven’t seen films like Lolita yet, but I suppose it creates the same emotions.

I don’t know much about Zsofia, her origins or her background, but she carries the film wonderfully. She manages to move from one emotion to another very quickly with disconcerting ease.

The film mixes cultures very naturally. There are French speakers passing by at one point and tourists who also speak English, and the main character does his best to communicate. The funny thing is that sometimes, even in Switzerland, people start speaking English to Swiss Germans, even though it’s not one of the country’s four national languages. The fourth language is Romansh, if you’ve forgotten.

This film does not descend into perversion like so many others. It retains a subtle edge that, for me above all, is essential. This is not a film with passionate, languorous kisses or endless embarrassing sex scenes. It manages to create a sense of unease, to fully show the twisted side of the situation and fully reflect the madness of the obsession.

So, I’m not going to say that it’s a masterpiece, even though I loved it, but I’ve regained hope in Swiss cinema, even if it’s obvious that the Swiss-Germans are still ahead of the French-speakers.

Unfortunately, there are too many scenes that break the rhythm, but which add poetry to the image, because you get lost in them and wonder: what is still reality? Did this really just happen or was it just a fantasy?
As a result, at the end there are plenty of scenes where you wonder what really happened and what was just in the head of the main character. But it’s still a very good drama, quite convincing, gripping and thought-provoking. Because when you think of incest, you think first and foremost of abuse. Not consent or a sister who actually falls in love with a brother.

The characters are all great (the brother, the parents, the pseudo-boyfriend…), although not too deeply explored. It’s really the actress who pulls it all together. Hats off to her!