Blessed Events (Glückliche Fügung)

• Director: Isabelle Stever
• Writer: Anke Stelling, Isabelle Stever
• Cast: Annika Kuhl, Stefan Rudolf
• Theatrical Release Date:
• On The Web IMDB Entry

Synopsis: Director Isabelle Stever’s second feature "Blessed Events," based on the short story of the same name by Anke Stelling, is a slow-burner, building tension and discomfort up to a boiling point. Not one to lull the audience into complacency, Stever puts the viewer into the lead character’s shoes, creating a truly daring sensorial experience.

Simone (Annika Kuhl) is thirty-seven, quiet, nervous and solitary. We know very little about her, except that one night she decides to go to a club on her own, picks up a guy, and wakes up in his car the next morning. After a few weeks, she realizes that she’s pregnant. By sheer coincidence, she runs into the father again in the hospital where she’s having an ultrasound. To her surprise, Hannes (Stefan Rudolf), is thrilled that she’s pregnant and wants to start a real relationship with her. Simone can’t believe what’s happening and seems poised for flight at the first sign of danger. This must be too good to be true. Hannes is a good-looking nurse in a palliative care unit, and showers tenderness on all those around him. He even buys a small house for the two of them.

But something doesn’t feel right. She knows nothing about him or his past. Why does he want to devote himself to her, a shy mousy woman that he barely knows? As her pregnancy develops, Simone begins to feel more and more suffocated in this perfect life of domesticity that she has created for herself. Yet, she can’t tell what is wrong. She has a devoted partner, a healthy baby on the way and a quaint home. Could this be happiness?

Director Stever effectively exploits long takes to emphasize Simone’s loneliness and tension, as she waits for something to break the silence, anything to crack the dubious happiness. In Simone’s world, everything around her is under construction and only partly formed, mirroring her own state of mental disarray.

Like a storm brewing beneath a calm sky, "Blessed Events" masterfully portrays a disaster waiting to happen. [Synopsis courtesy of Cameron Bailey, Toronto International Film Festival]