Anatomy of a mother and son’s relationship

Anyone with a teenager in their life will sympathise with Nina, a Berlin-based orchestra conductor in this atmospheric German drama. But anyone who has been a teen will feel for Lars.

Anyone with a teenager in their life will sympathise with Nina, a Berlin-based orchestra conductor. Anyone who has been a teen will feel for Lars.

“Blah, blah, blah, blah.” That’s what teenager Lars (Jona Levin Nicolai) says to his mother Nina (Maren Eggert) at a pivotal point in the moody, atmospheric German drama Not a Word.

Anyone with a teenager in their life will sympathise with Nina, a Berlin-based orchestra conductor preparing for an important performance of Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. Anyone who has been a teen will feel for Lars.

The parent-child dynamic is a central point of this compelling psychological drama written and directed by Slovenian-German film-maker Hanna Slak. Nina and Lars are tethered but there is a bridge between them.

That bridge is not only by his design. She is busy with her work, constantly on the phone about the concert, and her ex-husband is absent. “Lars I don’t have the time,” she tells her son.

This thought-provoking theme of motherhood and otherhood — can Nina be a maestra and a mother? — reminds me of the 2022 novel Bad Art Mother by the Australian writer Edwina Preston.

Two things happen that will either snap that tether between mother and son or pull them closer together. First, something horrible happens to a girl at Lars’s school. Soon afterwards, he falls from a classroom window.

We don’t see him fall and, as in Justine Triet’s superb Anatomy of a Fall, that opens questions. Did he slip, as he says he did, while trying to fix a broken window latch? His mother says she believes him but there’s doubt in her eyes.

This uncertainty extends to what happened to the girl at the school, who was friendly with Lars. Was he involved? On this question the title, Not a Word, becomes important.

Nina decides Lars needs a break. He chooses the family beach house on an island off the west coast of France. It’s winter. The island is deserted, barren, cold and windy.

A storm is coming, literally and metaphorically. It’s in this unforgiving environment, with Mahler’s tempestuous music in the background, that the answers will — or will not — be found.

Not a Word (M)

German language with English subtitles
87 minutes
In cinemas as part of the German Film Festival 2024 (germanfilmfestival.com.au)

★★★½