Cloud 9

Shot with natural light and a handheld camera, writer-director Andreas Dresen's Cloud 9 opens with a sexual encounter between 67-year-old seamstress Inge (Ursula Werner) and her 76-year-old neighbor Karl (Horst Westphal). Keeping dialogue to a minimum (and eschewing a score), Dresen initially creates the assumption that Inge and Karl are divorced or widowed, except it turns out that Inge isn't exactly unattached; it appears that she and husband Werner (Horst Rehberg) have a stable marriage. Something, however, is clearly amiss. Since the story begins after Inge's first meeting with Karl, it isn't clear when they started seeing each other, but it becomes obvious that Inge prefers Karl's company and can't stop thinking about him whenever they're apart. When the guilt becomes too much to bear, Inge finally tells the truth to her daughter, who understands, and her husband of 30 years, who doesn't. When he asks whether she isn't too old for this sort of foolishness, she retorts, “What does my age have to do with it? It doesn't matter if I'm 16 or 60 ... or 80.” Winner of German Film Awards for best actress and director, Cloud 9 is a sexually frank and sympathetic exploration of autumnal desire. Recommended. (K. Fennessy)