Reseñas de la crítica

She had more power in the beginning of the relationship and they were reaching exactly the point when the power was beginning to shift to his side. There was not much further she could go with her career and his was just beginning. She's paranoid that he'll leave her. He's still dependent on her for confidence, and yet she's also a reminder of his insecurity. This pivot point is interesting because it's a see-saw of exactly equal weight in power, ever shifting within each scene.

Aided by actors who are fearless in exploring their own bodies and minds, she transforms what should be a familiar story into an emotional tour de force, and at the same time creates what might be considered to be a definitive generational portrait.

It's as nuanced, as gripping, and as utterly believable a relationship drama as I had heard that it was, brought to life by two actors who have clearly parsed the complex, ambivalent psychologies of their characters to the finest possible edge—and yet, somehow show up on screen looking casual, spontaneous, and physically at ease with each other in a way that movies almost never show you.

The film contains several monologues of self-examination reminiscent of Ingmar Bergman's chamber dramas, probably the closest point-of-reference for Ade's psychological examination, and the leads respond to the material with performances of uncommon complexity. Needless to say, this sort of filmmaking is an acquired taste, but Ade and her cast are so thorough in their characterizations that even irritated viewers should be impressed with their perceptiveness.

The possibility exists that these two make for exasperating moviegoing. My seatmate watched desperate for a murder — or anything that means something is happening. But "Everyone Else'' is not about hurricanes and earthquakes and knives in the back. It's about private, emotional phenomena: the tiny tremors and imperceptible shifts that bring a couple closer together or drive them apart, almost without their noticing.

Everyone Else represents a huge step forward, in terms of Ade's visual facility and her sense of proportion. Sardinia's lush Mediterranean vistas make the ideal complement for Chris and Gitti's awkward negotiations, as they jointly work so hard to avoid bourgeois cliché that they effectively chloroform any hint of genuine affection; the movie recognizes that true happiness requires reveling in the same mushy, romantic kitsch that you may find repellent when you see it indulged in by others.

It's all captured with fluid, handheld cameras that allow characters to slip in and out of a semi-permeable frame and an intuitive, nearly Rohmer-esque rhythm of pans and reaction shots—but the plotless sequence of tetchy squabbles and crinkled cutesy faces quickly becomes repetitive, and occasionally forced (one oddly-lit, clumsily-performed sex scene seems to drag on for no other reason than to impose the couple's communication difficulties upon us).

One is tempted to speak of the film with shoulder-shrugging clichés about the irrationality, impossibility, cruelty, and fickleness of romantic love or about the intertwined dance of love and hate. But the events of Everyone Else are simultaneously too uniquely banal and too irreducibly profound for those handles. In its own wild way Ade's film is a perfectly complete portrait of romantic entanglement. Being on the inside can be brutal, but few things are as worthy of the trouble.

There's a slight imbalance in how Ade directs our sympathies... but Everyone Else unloads a fusillade of truth bombs about those painfully specific moments when communication breaks down and couples start talking past each other. It isn't pretty to witness, but the pain of it smarts.

A few scenes almost drag and a late flash of a knife feels false. But the film's uninflected realism and unforced beauty alone make it worthy of exploring and revisiting, as does the simple truth that love is too often an elusive subject in contemporary cinema. Ms. Ade doesn't pretend to have an answer to our most profound questions about love in her plaintive scenes from a romance. But the wonderful last line — "look at me" — suggests one place to start.

The conversations always cut out exactly at the point that the tidbit of ominous significance has been delivered; there's no excess, no sudden impulse of the mind, no thought that doesn't follow the train on which the director and writer, Maren Ade, has set them. She focuses on the minor but allows for no ambiguity: every detail is calibrated and highlighted to make her points with a boring obviousness.

There's an exactitude to [Ade's] filmmaking that anchors the almost improvisatory feel of many of her scenes. We sense that this realism has been painstakingly constructed: Bernhard Keller's camera manages a captivating directness -- often framing the characters in convenient two-shots, always at just the right distance to capture their gestures and glances but never intrusive -- without sacrificing formal grace.