The Audition is part of the German Film Festival which runs from 25 May to 20 June in Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Byron Bay. Directed by Ina Weisse and 99 minutes long, it stars the incomparable Nina Hoss, Simon Abkarian, and Jens Albinus.
Winner of Best Actress at San Sebastián and Stockholm Film Festival 2019 and Nominated Best Feature, Hamburg Film Festival 2019, and Aurora Award, Tromsø International Film Festival 2020, the performances are intense and character-driven.
A meticulously arranged visual concerto from acclaimed German actor/director Ina Weisse, Nina Hoss is captivating as a woman trapped in the pursuit of success. She is Anna Bronsky, a stern violin teacher at a music-focused high school in Berlin. She's married to French violin maker Philippe (Simon Abkarian) and they have a 10-year-old son Jonas (Serafin Mishiev) who also plays the instrument.
During the school's annual admission exams, Anna pushes for the entry of a student, Alexander (Ilja Monti), in whom she detects remarkable talent, despite the opposition of other teachers. She becomes obsessed with Alexander's progress as she prepares him for the intermediate exam - The Audition. So obsessed in pursuit of excellence, she also challenges herself to once again take on joining a quartet with her colleague Christian (Jens Albinus), with whom she's having an affair.
The musicality of the concertos are so engaging, it lends you to want to attend a live performance.This sound and mind engagement during the musical scenes are all the relief you are going to get out of this film. The rest is tightly wound in layers of emotions, an intriguing look at characters, and some strong performances. Nina Hoss is impeccable as the tightly-wound, highly-strung violin instructor. She has a great emotional range and managed to add just enough humanity to a character that could have easily been viewed as simply a demanding, strict, unfeeling monster. She does manage to give you a glimpse of that side of her character but also gives you a window of understanding through a peep at her obscure relationship with her terse father and others, her insecurities, her expectations and many scenes that requires you to be completely absorbed, to make of it what you will.
You can't fault any of the performances down to the child actors who also put up strong performances comparable to their more experienced counterparts. For some, the dialogue may feel stilted and repetitive in portraying a bored existence, yet it is these very scenes that drive home the atmosphere and keeps the film tightly wound with a quiet intensity running throughout through a complex web of emotions A troubled relationship, a bland existence, expectations, a terse father, an act of cruelty, there are so many scenes to speculate on that keeps it interesting for those who thrive on making amateur psychological analysis. The end could leave you puzzled as to what it really means, yet that is the joy of it. The film allows for your imagination, your own conclusions and your emotional intelligence to derive meaning from it all.
If the trailer is anything to go by, I'm looking forward to seeing The Space Between The Lines. In the trailer alone it bristles with the intensity of romance and unrequited love and sex. I look forward to what seems like a touching modern love story that begins with an extraordinary e-mail exchange between two strangers that reaches the unavoidable question of whether a real-life encounter would survive. It doesn't hurt that it's based on the international bestseller from Daniel Glattauer and from the producers of Toni Erdmann. A romantic drama directed by Vanessa Jopp, it's an entertaining epistolary cyber romance that bristles with more sexual tension than the iconic You've Got Mail.
