2023-12-23 13:21:06
The year that is currently ending will probably have to put up with the fact that a not insignificant part of the literary educated population will think of a poem by the lyrical visionary Ernst Jandl when they think back to 2023. “From time to time” it says. And the year that Jandl is building up to was a “shitty year”.
The fact that we are quoting this here now has, of course, to do with the turn of the year and the assessments that one draws at the end of a year. But it also had to be, because Jan Georg Schütte’s new improv theater series “The Festival of Love” is discussed below. And that’s why we won’t just be talking about Christmas, but also quite often about shit and making shit up. And about how you can let everything that has accumulated in a family run its course.
also read
“A Celebration of Love” (apart from Christmas, which we already mentioned) is about plumbing. And German history, about the Wall, which has fallen everywhere, only after more than thirty years not six feet underground between the sewage pipes from East and West.
The Chamber of Commerce says in its justification for awarding the Golden Sleeve to Scheuble that the M6000 sleeve from the globally active Swabian gas water shit company Scheuble (slogan: “It works with Scheuble”) was a humanitarian act. “Now what belongs together flows together.”
Macarons as a passion
The Scheubles reside in a 1,400 square meter, moated Swabian villa, which in real life is located somewhere near Hamburg. It’s Christmas Eve. Alexander (Oliver Wnuk), the CEO and boss of 538 employees, is in the kitchen tinkering with macarons, which are his passion.
Sabine (Claudia Michelsen), his wife, has just sold a million muffs to the Chinese for ten million and somewhere along the way she ended up in the wine pint of an almost Jesus-like bar philosopher, where she gets stuck for the time being, but then calls her loved ones at home saying she’s in trouble Traffic jam. In the winding sewage system of this fabulous four-part series, a lot of things come together that haven’t belonged together for a long time.
also read
“Wellness for couples”
At this point we may need to briefly explain the Schütte method. “The Festival of Love” is Schütte’s eighth improvisational work and, so to speak, the spin-off of last year’s multi-part “The Funeral,” which told of a bereavement in Sabine’s Mecklenburg (plumbing) family. As in “Funeral” or, for example, in the film “Wellness for Couples” (also filmed in a moated castle and also with Devid Striesow), Schütte and his co-author Sebastian Schultz meticulously work out the characters and their constellations.
A text does not exist; it emerges while playing and develops between the actors. Schütte and Schultz give secrets to their actors, who can use them as they please to encourage gentle escalations. The test run lasted five days before filming of the “Festival of Love” began. 45 cameras were running in the villa and had to be coordinated, with four to six hours of continuous filming over three days. Schütte then cuts together his series and his film from the mountain of material.
The sleeve in the room at the “Festival of Love” is a conscious part that finally flanges East and West together, for which Alexander Scheuble can be celebrated. Only someone who hasn’t been to Swabian for decades knows what the invention is all about. His name is Mario Meurer and he runs the plumbing business known from “Burial” on Schaalsee, through which the border between East and West once ran (now the border between Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Schleswig-Holstein runs there).
Have mercy, the Easterners are coming: Thorsten (Devid Striesow, left), Jäcki (Luise von Finckh, M.) and Mario (Charly Hübner)
Quelle: ARD Degeto/Gulliver Theis
He is Sabine’s brother. Charly Hübner plays him. And he’s making his way to Swabia for Christmas with his small truck, his influencer daughter and his rather crazy brother Thorsten, called Thoddo, who is constantly planning out some completely crazy projects, for example covering the Schaalsee with solar panels.
Devid Striesow is Thoddo. And he is as fearless as he is magnificent (which applies to the rest of Schütte’s personage). They pack several jars of Mecklenburg sausages and a bucket of potato salad with the pipes and toilet bowls and drive off. The sausages and potato salad are still needed. But this still takes time.
What is happening in the moated castle, as soon as they have parked their mini truck, is like – but that is actually every Christmas when the entire family gets together – a trial before a truth and reconciliation commission in which we are the judges. Schütte lets the snobby Western dynasty (Alexander’s sister runs a Reiki center in Saint-Tropez, which wouldn’t work without Muffen money, the daughter has lied about an influencer life that would blow up without Muffe) and the Easterners attack each other without mercy.
To where it hurts
The Scheubles get more satirical fat than the Meurers. The density of clichés is high. But that doesn’t matter. Because every cliché behind the next loop on the improv rollercoaster is immediately exposed as a cliché again. And exactly when you get comfortable with the Meurers and the Scheubles, Schütte’s game drills through to the point where it hurts everyone (and us).
“The Festival of Love” is of course not a Christmas film. It’s perhaps the funniest sociological play on how things are. Between those from the East and those from the West. Between the women from here and from here. Between those up there and those down here.
Here you will find content from YouTube
In order to display embedded content, your revocable consent to the transmission and processing of personal data is necessary, as the providers of the embedded content require this consent as third party providers [In diesem Zusammenhang können auch Nutzungsprofile (u.a. auf Basis von Cookie-IDs) gebildet und angereichert werden, auch außerhalb des EWR]. By setting the switch to “on”, you agree to this (revocable at any time). This also includes your consent to the transfer of certain personal data to third countries, including the USA, in accordance with Art. 49 (1) (a) GDPR. You can find more information about this. You can revoke your consent at any time using the switch and privacy at the bottom of the page.
Ernst Jandl, the visionary fatalist, built a “shitty life” out of the “shit years,” each of which has a “numeron” (“shit nineteen hundred shit eight and shit seventy shit”). In the case of “The Feast of Love” there is no question of that, as far as spoilers are concerned.
And one doesn’t mind the idea that things could continue with the Scheubles and the Meurers, with diverted waters and diverted wastewater. Maybe next year, which might not be such a “shit year” as the current one.
#ARD #series #Festival #Love #shitty #year #good