Four Minutes (Vier Minuten)
Four minutes takes the familiar theme of the tortured, misunderstood artist and plays it out in the setting of a modern-day women’s prison. The artist in question is Jenny (Hannah Herzsprung), a young, violent piano-playing genius who is locked up for murder. She finds solace in her tentative friendship with a cantankerous old piano teacher, Traude (Monica Bleibtreu), who herself conceals a secret past. The pair bond over music, which also gives them respite from a cruel and corrupt world.
Jenny’s one redeeming feature is her piano-playing, which wins the admiration of the watching media, and the contempt of her fellow prisoners. She is rude, sadistic and thoroughly selfish, personality traits apparently explained by her abusive past. Her back story, which involves her being repeatedly raped by her alcoholic father, draws our pity, but that pity never blossoms into admiration.
There are several moments of dark humour, such as when a fellow prisoner hangs herself and Jenny steals a fag out of the corpse’s pocket, or when she attempts to take her own life by running out of a window, and falls back against the impact of the shatterproof glass. However, the film is too absorbed in its narrow subject to sustain our interest to the end.
Four Minutes won the gong for Best German Film at the 2007 German Film Awards, with Monica Bleibtreu named as best actress for her role. Indeed, the acting from both leads is excellent - both sensitive and intense - but it isn’t enough to pull the film from its gloomy introspection.
