Directed by: Ina Weisse
Written by: Daphne Charizani (screenplay), Ina Weisse (screenwriter)
Produced by: Pierre-Olivier Bardet, Felix von Boehm
Starring: Nina Hoss, Simo Abkarian, Serafin Mishiev, Ilja Monti.
Viewed in German with English subtitles (released as part of the German Film Festival).
“I’m sorry it’s all so complicated right now.”
The Audition follows Anna (Nina Hoss): a violinist, a teacher, a wife and a mother.
She watches young Alexander (Ilja Monit) audition for tutorage at the school where she teaches. She sees talent. She wants him to be her student.
We watch Anna with her husband, a French violin maker, Philippe (Simon Abkarian). He loves her. He understands her, her discomfort, anxiety. He doesn’t mind swapping tables, swapping plates.
He knows something is wrong just by listening to her play violin.
At first, The Audition feels like it’s about the music, about the protégée, Alexander. A protégée, but also a replacement for Anna’s lack of success on stage.
But this is a nuanced film that explores the slow twist of relationships to what really matters to Anna: the desperation to succeed. Her son’s need of a mother’s love. A mother’s need for her son’s attention.
This is a film about the effect of a son pulling away from his mother. How it turns her life to seek fulfillment from an affair with another man. To see her ambition projected onto her young student so she pushes and pushes, eventually setting her own son up in competition against her protégée, Alexander.
This is about how she seeks comfort from the warmth of a hairdryer blown under her jumper.
But more than from her son or lover or husband, Anna needs fulfillment because something’s missing.
The more I write the more I understand the slow reveal of this character, Anna: her mother dying when she was young. Her father tough with his life lessons.
It’s a carefully constructed narrative, a character study set to the sound of the violin.
This is a bittersweet piece of a person’s life: her successes, her failures and ultimately her need above all else.
It’s a slow burn with layers of music and the language about music, but it’s the undercurrent that’s shown in a look or gesture, the unspoken that speaks the loudest – that’s what the film is really about.
The Audition is a difficult movie to review because it’s a subtle one, a cerebral thought-provoker and a film I’ve enjoyed pulling apart and thinking about after the credits have rolled, almost more than the actual viewing.