Déja vus, memories of the future, divergent gravitational fields – Aron is giving his inaugural lecture at university and just you as the viewer has gotten used to hearing about the fields of physics, philosophy, and the mystical, the film takes a sharp turn and becomes a beautiful love story: Aron and Nora, palindrome names, are in love and on their way to having a happy life. And then something changes. And Nora grieves. The scenes with a lonely, traumatized young woman show the confidence of Mariko Minoguchi who makes her astounding debut: an emotional, intelligent, and very smartly set up film in which happiness and death are very close to each other.
Coincidence and fate are involved: Nora and Aron, a perfect match, are torn apart, and then a new man enters Nora‘s life. Minoguchi weaves a complex net made up of references and retrospectives memories and inklings, small objects and gestures. The film is in turn a love story, a grief drama, a thriller, and fateful tragedy. It‘s astounding how easy the narrative flows; it doesn‘t fall into any of the cliched traps or philosophical overloads. Saskia Rosendahl plays the main character in an ethereal way, she conveys emotion with subtle facial expressions; Edin Hasanović, both depressed and determined, is drived to commit a desperate act. And Julius Feldmeier as Aron brings the moments of happiness and love in the film, even though the moments have long passed. But maybe the film, like life, has a temporal simultaneity and an always instead of a succession.

Harald Mühlbeyer

Translation: Elinor Lewy