Summer '04 (German: Sommer '04 an der Schlei) is a 2006 German drama film directed by Stefan Krohmer and starring Martina Gedeck, Robert Seeliger, and Svea Lohde.[1] Written by Daniel Nocke, the film is about a middle-aged woman coming to terms with her son's sexual awakening and who ends up involved in some extramarital exploration of her own. The film was presented at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival, and the 2007 Berlin International Film Festival.[2]
Miriam Franz has just turned forty and is starting a seaside vacation with her husband André and fifteen-year-old son Nils on the Schlei, a narrow inlet of the Baltic Sea in Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany. André has given Niels permission to bring his twelve-year-old girlfriend Livia along for the trip. Miriam is concerned they may take their relationship to a physical level, but André seems unconcerned.
One day, Nils and Livia go sailing, but Nils returns alone saying that Livia is still sailing with a man they met, Bill Ginger, an American of German heritage. Bill brings Livia home and seems quite taken with her, and vice versa. Miriam is concerned by Bill's flirtation with the underage girl, finding it "a little weird"; André is unimpressed with Bill's fawning compliments. Soon Livia is spending all her time with Bill, while Nils sits at home watching war documentaries.
When Livia fails to come home one night, Miriam, feeling responsible for her summer guest, drives to Bill's home to confront them about their inappropriate behavior. When she arrives, Bill casually tells Miriam that Livia went for a walk after an argument. While they wait, Bill admits how much he's enjoyed his time and conversations with Livia, after his years in America where all talk is about "money and stupidity." He assures Miriam that he knows "when to stop" with the young girl. When Livia finally returns, Miriam drives her home and learns that Livia was disappointed that they didn't have sex.
The next day, Miriam, André, and Livia join Bill for a day of sailing; Miriam and Bill take the C55 catamaran, while André and Livia take the sailboat Bénéteou. During a break from sailing, Miriam expresses interest in Bill's sex life, and as they relax on a beach she starts to seduce him, but he resists her advances. The next day, while Nils and Livia are out sailing, Miriam drives to Bill's house and they have sex. Afterwards, they see Livia waiting downstairs—apparently having heard their lovemaking.
In the coming days, the family spends time at a fair and visits the Landesmuseum at the Gottorf Castle to visit the bog people exhibit. The relationship between André and Nils continues to grow strained. Miriam returns to Bill's house and they have sex again. Afterwards, Bill breaks off their relationship, saying he is in love with Livia. The next day, Miriam and Livia are out sailing when Livia is struck in the head by the main sail boom. Livia says she is okay, and they continue sailing. Miriam informs Livia she can no longer see Bill. When Livia says she's tired and asks to turn back, Miriam dismisses her, thinking she just wants to meet Bill. Later, Livia says she feels sick and collapses, hitting her head again.
Miriam returns to shore and brings Livia to the hospital, where she dies. At home, Nils asks his father why he lied about the timing of the incident, noting if Miriam had turned back earlier, Livia would still be alive. After Nils leaves, Miriam tells André that their son is right—that when Livia was initially struck, they were still fairly close to shore. That night, Miriam packs her things and André drops her off at Bill's house. Initially, Bill does not want to see her, but later they talk about Livia. After Miriam confesses there is no one she'd rather be with, they have sex.
A few years later, Miriam and Bill, who are now a couple, visit with Livia's mother and her new suitor in Germany. Miriam and Bill left Germany in 2004 and have been living in the United States and traveling. Livia's mother reads them a letter her daughter wrote to a friend in August 2004. In the letter, Livia mentions how Miriam and her husband do not belong together, and she thinks Miriam and Bill would make a good match. She thinks she can help bring them together, to be "the happiest couple in the world." Livia's mother asks them if they are now indeed happy, and Miriam says, "Yes, we're very happy."[3]
Upon its release, Summer '04 received generally positive reviews in the United States and Europe. In his review in The New York Times, Matt Zoller Seitz wrote, "Mr. Krohmer's film is distinguished by very long takes, ominous cutaways to undulating river reeds, near-somnambulist underplaying by a first-rate cast and nail-on-the-head dialogue about materialism, hypocrisy, morality and mortality."[1]
In his review in the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan wrote, "Director Krohmer creates a fine sense of erotic tension, and actress Gedeck provides more than enough emotional resonance. This is one tricky film, but it stays with you nevertheless." Turnan concluded:
It's an unusual drama, one grounded in the difficulty inherent in intimate relationships, in attempting to read and assess the behavior of others. The unpredictability of its plot demands considerable suspension of disbelief, but if you stick it out to the unforeseen conclusion, the rewards are there.[4]
In her review in The Village Voice, Michelle Orange wrote, "Elements of L'Avventura, Swimming Pool, and even A Place in the Sun materialize in the film's sophisticated layering of theme and counter-theme, and Gedeck in particular successfully invests her lightly defiant sensuality in this thorough and thoroughly engaging investigation of age (and entitlement) before beauty."[5]
In his review in Salon.com, Andrew O'Hehir applauded Martina Gedeck's "tremendous" performance and called the film a "well-crafted and deceptively leisurely film, with a heart of ice."[6]
In his review in the New York Observer, Andrew Sarris called Summer '04 a "marvelous German film" with a "warmly stirring romantic maelstrom of five multigenerational libidos let loose at a lakeside vacation site." Sarris concluded:
The surprise ending amounts to one of the most heart-rendingly brilliant coups in directing, writing and acting I have ever experienced on the screen. Like only a few endings I can recall, it makes you rethink everything you have seen before, and weep a little inwardly. The performances are all right-on, but Ms. Gedeck reaches new heights even for her, after her previous triumphs in Sandra Nettelbeck’s Mostly Martha (2001) and Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others (2006).[7]
In his review in Slant Magazine, Ed Gonzalez gave the film three of four stars and wrote that the film "exudes the fleeting quality of a summer breeze, exploring with unpretentious candor—and very little skin—how a young girl's sexual agency rebukes an older generation's notions of right and wrong."[8]
The film received an 80% positive rating from top film critics based on 20 reviews.[9]
Box office
Summer '04 did not do well at the box office, earning only $632,017 in total worldwide gross sales. In the United States, the film was released in only two theaters, generating $20,474 in gross domestic revenue.[10]
Awards and nominations
2006 Cannes Film Festival Film Presented
2006 Toronto International Film Festival Film Presented
2007 Berlin International Film Festival Film Presented
2007 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival Film Presented[2]
Related Research Articles
Hedeby was an important Danish Viking Age trading settlement near the southern end of the Jutland Peninsula, now in the Schleswig-Flensburg district of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. Around 965, chronicler Abraham ben Jacob visited Hedeby and described it as, "a very large city at the very end of the world's ocean."
The history of Schleswig-Holstein consists of the corpus of facts since the pre-history times until the modern establishing of the Schleswig-Holstein state.
The Danevirke or Danework is a system of Danish fortifications in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. This historically important linear defensive earthwork across the neck of the Cimbrian peninsula was initiated by the Danes in the Nordic Iron Age about AD 650. It was later expanded multiple times during Denmark's Viking Age and High Middle Ages. The Danevirke was last used for military purposes in 1864 during the Second War of Schleswig.
SMS Schleswig-Holstein was the last of the five pre-dreadnought Deutschland-class battleships built by the German Kaiserliche Marine. The ship, named for the province of Schleswig-Holstein, was laid down in the Germaniawerft dockyard in Kiel in August 1905 and commissioned into the fleet nearly three years later. The ships of her class were already outdated by the time they entered service, being inferior in size, armor, firepower and speed to the new generation of dreadnought battleships.
Mostly Martha is a 2001 German romantic comedy drama film written and directed by Sandra Nettelbeck and starring Martina Gedeck, Maxime Foerste, and Sergio Castellitto. Filmed in Hamburg, Germany, and Italy, the film is about a workaholic chef who is forced to adjust to major changes in her personal and professional life that are beyond her control. The film won the Créteil International Women's Film Festival Grand Prix Award, and was nominated for the Goya Award for Best European Film in 2002. It was also nominated for the German Film Awards Outstanding Feature Film.
The Good Shepherd is a 2006 American spy film produced and directed by Robert De Niro and starring Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, and De Niro, with an extensive supporting cast. Although it is fictional, loosely based on events in the life of James Jesus Angleton, it is advertised as telling the history of the birth of counterintelligence in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Film Quarterly, a journal devoted to the study of film, television, and visual media, is published by University of California Press. It publishes scholarly analyses of international and Hollywood cinema as well as independent film, including documentary and animation. The journal also revisits film classics; examines television and digital and online media; reports from international film festivals; reviews recent academic publications; and on occasion addresses installations, video games and emergent technologies. It welcomes established scholars as well as emergent voices that bring new perspectives to bear on visual representation as rooted in issues of diversity, race, lived experience, gender, sexuality, and transnational histories. Film Quarterly brings timely critical and intersectional approaches to criticism and analyses of visual culture.
Martina Gedeck is a German actress. She achieved wider international acclaim due to her roles in films such as Mostly Martha (2001), The Lives of Others (2006), and The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008). She has won several awards, including two Deutscher Filmpreis, in 1997 for Supporting Actress in Life is All You Get, and in 2002 for Actress in Mostly Martha.
Süderbrarup is a municipality in the district of Schleswig-Flensburg, in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. It is situated on the north side of the Schlei, approx. 20 km northeast of Schleswig, and 30 km southeast of Flensburg. Süderbrarup is known for the Thorsberg moor archeological site.
The Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival (SHMF) is a classical music festival held each summer throughout the state of Schleswig-Holstein in Northern Germany.
Atomised is a 2006 German drama film written and directed by Oskar Roehler and produced by Oliver Berben and Bernd Eichinger. It is based on the novel Les Particules élémentaires by Michel Houellebecq. The film stars Moritz Bleibtreu as Bruno, Christian Ulmen as Michael, Martina Gedeck as Christiane, Franka Potente as Annabelle, and Nina Hoss as Jane.
Mechtilde of Holstein was a Danish queen consort, married to King Abel of Denmark and later to Birger Jarl, Regent of Sweden.
Haderslev is a Danish town in the Region of Southern Denmark with a population of 22,277. It is the main town and the administrative seat of Haderslev Municipality and is situated in the eastern part of Southern Jutland. Haderslev is home of Sønderjyske, which is an association football team that plays in the Danish Superliga since 2008. The town is named after King Hader.
Sol Gabetta is an Argentine cellist. The daughter of Andrés Gabetta and Irène Timacheff-Gabetta, she has French and Russian ancestry. Her brother Andrés is a baroque violinist.
Jazz Baltica is a jazz festival which was started in 1990. Up until 2011 it was held every summer in Schloss Salzau near Kiel, Germany, and the coast of the Baltic Sea. In 2009 the festival was directed by Bengt-Arne Wallin and in 2012, Swedish trombonist Nils Landgren took over as artistic director and it was moved to the Evers-Werft shipyard at the harbor of Niendorf, a Baltic Sea resort near Lübeck.
Tourism is an important economic factor for Germany's northernmost state of Schleswig-Holstein.
The Wall is a 2012 Austrian-German drama film written and directed by Julian Pölsler and starring Martina Gedeck. Based on the 1963 novel Die Wand by Austrian writer Marlen Haushofer and adapted for the screen by Julian Pölsler, the film is about a woman who visits with friends at their hunting lodge in the Austrian Alps. Left alone while her friends walk to a nearby village, the woman soon discovers she is cut off from all human contact by a mysterious invisible wall. With her friends' loyal dog Lynx as her companion, she lives the next three years in isolation looking after her animals. The Wall was filmed on location in the Salzkammergut region of the Austrian Alps. The film was selected as the Austrian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 86th Academy Awards, but it was not nominated.
Monika Heinold is a German politician of Alliance 90/The Greens and former Schleswig-Holstein Deputy Minister-President and Minister of Finance.
Eva Kruse is a German jazz musician and composer.
Caligula... The Untold Story is a 1982 historical exploitation film starring David Brandon and Laura Gemser. Written by George Eastman and Joe D'Amato, and produced, directed and shot by Joe D'Amato, it was created to cash-in on the success of Tinto Brass's Caligula without being a sequel or remake.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
