"Zwischen uns steht ein Salat", which means literally translated "Between us, there stands a salad", is a German live action short film from 2017, so just one more year until this one has its fifth anniversary and most of you probably will show up here after 2021, perhap it happened already. The writer and director of these slightly over five minutes is Alice von Gwinner from Hamburg and she had her 30th birthday that year. Of course, this is also in the German language. For von Gwinner, this is the third of so far four short film works and we will see if she ever managed to release a full feature film. She is young and the ambition is there, so why not. I just hope she can improve a bit then from the quality in this film. We have an estranged couple sitting at an incredibly long table.
It is certainly no coincidence that early on the two paintings are closer to each other than the two humans. Interesting scenario. However, all that followed afterwards did not really win me over. The changes in salad size and the size of the spice mill (not sure if it was pepper) may have had symbolic relevance reflecting the emotional distance between the protagonists, but for me personally these symbolisms did not work convincingly I must say. The way in which everything is solved towards the end with the two being close again and also a happy ending for the paintings was more tolerable, but also not as good as I would have liked it to be. A bit of a pity. You can see that the ambition was there with von Gwinner, but the execution and the general vision was not (yet) on a level where I would give the overall outcome a positive recommendation.
Cannot say anything about the four cast members here, two actors and two voice actors. Oh wait, I see one of them was even in the Oscar-winning "The Reader". Now that I did not expect. And one of the others was in "Hindafing", a fairly successful series too, so I may have been a bit harsh on the cast here. Their (voice) acting is certainly not the film's biggest weakness. Still I must say, with a little play on words linked to the name of the director here, this film may be a Gwinner, but it is not a winner. Go watch something else instead. Also I was pretty surprised this was on MDR minutes ago in the middle of the night.
It is certainly no coincidence that early on the two paintings are closer to each other than the two humans. Interesting scenario. However, all that followed afterwards did not really win me over. The changes in salad size and the size of the spice mill (not sure if it was pepper) may have had symbolic relevance reflecting the emotional distance between the protagonists, but for me personally these symbolisms did not work convincingly I must say. The way in which everything is solved towards the end with the two being close again and also a happy ending for the paintings was more tolerable, but also not as good as I would have liked it to be. A bit of a pity. You can see that the ambition was there with von Gwinner, but the execution and the general vision was not (yet) on a level where I would give the overall outcome a positive recommendation.
Cannot say anything about the four cast members here, two actors and two voice actors. Oh wait, I see one of them was even in the Oscar-winning "The Reader". Now that I did not expect. And one of the others was in "Hindafing", a fairly successful series too, so I may have been a bit harsh on the cast here. Their (voice) acting is certainly not the film's biggest weakness. Still I must say, with a little play on words linked to the name of the director here, this film may be a Gwinner, but it is not a winner. Go watch something else instead. Also I was pretty surprised this was on MDR minutes ago in the middle of the night.