Nachbeben

Unfair Assumptions Brought To Us By The World Of Swiss Cinema

Today I watched Nachbeben, a movie actually from this century (2006!) and it told me that Switzies are morally bankrupt, cruel and dishonest, but they are all rich and have really nice stuff.

It was about a bloke (HP) and his wife (Karin) and HPs best pal and business partner (Phillip) and his wife (Sue) and Phillip's business protégé (Toni) and the son of HP and Karin (Max) and Max's hot Danish nanny (Birthe. Although why Max needed a nanny was a bit of a mystery because he was at least 14 or so). They all got together for a barbeque at HP and Karin's super-fancy house, and then, in the manner of all those movies where a bunch of people go to someone's house, have a bit too much to drink and watch their lives fall apart, they all, unsurprisingly, had a bit too much to drink and watched their lives fall apart.

Nachbeben was an okay movie. I didn't like any of the characters much, and I thought that they sometimes did fairly inexplicable things, but their problems, although ludicrously predictable (who thinks someone was having an affair with the hot Scandy nanny? Anyone?), were interesting enough. I like these movies where all the action is contained within a certain space and time (like Peter's Friends, The Anniversary Party, The Big Chill etc. Or Festen, which I have somehow never seen. Incidentally, Nachbeben had a bit of a Dogma feel to it. The lighting was funny and the sound seemed to be a bit distant at times (although maybe that was just my computer) and the camera was quite wibbly occasionally. None of it in a bad way, more of a grainy realism kind of thing) and where, by the end of the party (or whatever) everything is out in the open but nothing is really fully resolved.

As it turns out, though, apparently no one else much cared for this movie (or possibly they had just seen it too many times already, because it really has been made a lot in the past). Reto had never even heard of it, and let's face it, if a Switzy who is reasonably interested in movies hasn't heard of it, then chances are that no one else in the world has either.