Ingeborg Bachmann - Reise in die Wüste

Ingeborg Bachmann - Journey Into the Desert

She is Austrian, he Swiss; she is a poet, he a playwright; she is a daredevil yet vulnerable, he is adventurous but a little conservative. When Ingeborg Bachmann and Max Frisch meet for the first time in Paris in the summer of 1958, they are already international celebrities of the literary world. In the four years that follow, they dabble in great love and an open relationship between his hometown of Zurich and her adopted Rome. Frisch envies her fame; Bachmann finds his typewriter clatter and his jealousy annoying. She is emancipated, experiments with a liberated existence, is mobile and productive; in Berlin, she writes the famous speech: "The Truth is Bearable for Humankind". She only realises afterwards that she is suffering, and by how much – with Adolf Opel in the desert, and with Hans Werner Henze in Italy. Margarethe von Trotta interweaves the times before and after the catastrophe. Her direction is frank, sober and elegant. Ronald Zehrfeld as the corpulent, pipe-smoking Frisch and Vicky Krieps (in the role of another cult figure after Empress Sisi) are the perfect match. This film is not about Bachmann’s fatal end, but about her hopes for love and respect, in literature, and in life.

Source: 73. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (Catalogue)