Having presented stylized cinema in recent years, Angela Schanelec’s new film is a drama. A wife who suffered an unfortunate ordeal cries on a bench; hearing her story, her husband feels as if his head might explode and collapses in the street. The acting style is striking: facial expressions avoid exaggeration, physical movements are minimized, and voices seem to emanate not from psychological interiority, but from pure physicality. During dialogue scenes, when an actor speaks lines across several minutes as if delivering a solitary monologue, it sends chills down the spine. Furthermore, the duration of the shots, the attitude toward the landscape, the use of on-location sound, and the minimalist spaces set this work apart from conventional dramas. Perhaps, My Wife Cries is a tribute to the late Jean-Marie Straub, who passed away during this period. Because this is a truly materialist film, even a crane moving slowly through the air cannot be regarded with indifference. Even so, an unexpected scene accompanied by a Leonard Cohen’s song suggests that this is not merely an austere film. It is a work of both tension and deep emotion.
Born in 1962 in Aalen. Angela Schanelec studied acting in Frankfurt am Main, before working at the Thalia Theater Hamburg and the Schaubühne Berlin. She studied directing at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin. She is Professor of Narrative Film at the University of Fine Arts Hamburg. I Was at Home, But... (2019) and Music (2023) won Silver Bears for Best Director and Best Screenplay, respectively, at the Berlinale.
From Tokyo International Film Festival 2026, No. 39
