Wolke 9

Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.
Rainer Maria Rilke

**

I have had this movie for quite a long time and ever since, I have been avoiding it. Having my own selfish issues about my age and the fact that I will be exactly 30 in a couple of months, I could not dare to watch the story of old people. Yet, finally today, after a conversation with a friend on something that is completely irrelevant, I remembered that I had this film in my archive and decided to see it.



Wolke 9 is a 2008 German movie directed by Andreas Dresen, about a woman, Inge, aged 67, finding love after 30 years of marriage. Right at the beginning of the movie, we see Inge, an old simple woman, taking the trousers she made for Karl, 76 to his apartment. Surprised to see her at the door, Karl goes on to try them on, and after this brief encounter, the next thing we know is the two rolling on the carpet naked, making a passionate and warm love. Inge almost runs out of the apartment right after and goes back to her routine life with her husband of 30 years, Werner. However, she can not really go back to it all, for she can not take her mind off Karl. When he also shows his affection by constantly calling her and trying to see her again, she gives in and the two start an affair, which is not an affair of only sex, but of true love.


While a love story is one that comes out of Hollywood or European cinema or anywhere in the world every year in countless examples, a story about old people is not as such, especially one that is so fact-driven and brave. Life after a certain age is like a restricted area for cinema, and surprisingly it is in fact an unknown territory in real life. It is like the time of your life where people think they should leave you alone and not discomfort you by revealing your privacy. And yet, people are actually living longer than 40-something today, up to 70 or 80, or maybe even longer, and despite the fact that they get old physically and mostly losing their glamour, they feel and discover things still, maybe even more today, in this fast-paced world. What makes Wolke 9 special is that it does break taboos about that period and shows us, bravely and honestly, what we have been ignoring for quite some time now; in order to do that, it literally strips down people who are not glamorously or elegantly young and fresh, leaving the viewer with a shock that a story without flawless skins or without the brightness of youth can actually be as warm and passionate and that love makes anyone shine no matter what age; yet it also emotionally strips them down, again along with us, the audience.

Aside from the obvious, there is something deeper within the story and this is the core of the beauty of the film, which makes it something more than the bravery of the director and the actors, that would start to mean plain if the sentences were to be repeated again and again. One might argue that it does not make a simple love triangle remarkable to even unusually tell it through older people, and that would be perfectly true in a way, yet the movie is not about who will end up with whom, but about a woman's life passed for ages after ages without realizing who she actually was and by never putting herself in first place; is it too late to be happy and to lose herself in love and passion, thus finding her true self, in an age over 60? I hope not.


In Wintertime Love, Jim Morrison sings;

Come with me, dance, my dear,
Winter's so cold this year,
You are so warm, my wintertime love to be.

and yes, love is warm, no matter at what age and yes, I believe that Inge is a lucky woman. I also am sure, now, that what I am afraid of are not the wrinkles or floppy breasts, but a life spent without true love or without knowing who I really am.

Who would have thought that I would thank Inge for that?