New York Film Festival: Window on the World

New home, old mission for 47th annual event

Comments (0) By Philippe Garnier Wednesday, Oct 14 2009

Best of the fest: Everyone Else

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Next to the tense and harrowing Lebanon (which shows hands down what an artistic fraud Waltz With Bashir was last year), the best narrative feature on offer was the seemingly mundane Everyone Else, which won the Silver Bear in Berlin this year. It’s only Maren Ade’s second film, but it was the best written feature at the festival, doing for the 21st-century couple what Polanski’s Knife in the Water or Antonioni’s L’Avventura were doing in the ’60s. This one even takes place on an island (Sardinia, instead of Sicily), and the main character is an architect, like Antonioni’s. Ade excels at rendering lovers’ silly banter, as well as those moments when the blissful balance shifts — usually when the couple interacts with others. In this case, it is another couple, richer and more worldly. There is one withering moment, when the man allows his guests to make fun of his mother’s taste in bedroom decor. He goes along with the jeering, maybe a little tipsy, maybe a bit spineless, but his partner’s look leaves no doubt about what just happened in her eyes. In this one minute, Ade manages to cull more truth and acuity than the entirety of Godard’s Contempt (whose actual subject wasn’t really this, anyway). One only hopes this film will get all the exposure it deserves in this country. If it does, the New York Film Festival will have served its purpose with flying colors.