Die Kommune [German]
Director: Thomas Vinterberg
Writer: Thomas Vinterberg, Mogens Rukov
Cast: Regina Fritsch, Dorothee Hartinger, Alexandra Henkel [German], Elisa Plüss, Adina Vetter, Dietmar König, Fabian Krüger, Joachim Meyerhoff [German], Tilo Nest

Plot:
Erik (Joachim Meyerhoff) just inherited the family house and he and his wife Anna (Regina Fritsch) and their daughter Freja (Elisa Plüss) are about to move in. But they don’t want to move in alone. Instead they want to build a commune. So they find Ole (Tilo Nest), the couple Steffen (Dietmar König) and Ditte (Alexandra Henkel), Mona (Dorothee Hartinger) and Virgil (Fabian Krüger) to move in with them. And this works rather well until Erik meets Emma (Adina Vetter) after a few years and falls in love with her.

I very much enjoyed this play despite a few weaknesses that it has. I liked the stage design, the cast was really good and even though the story doesn’t exactly cover new ground it is still very engaging.

There’s been many a story told about communes and how they don’t work (usually either because they are like sects or because everybody sleeps around. Or at least that’s the story logic). So Vinterberg’s story really doesn’t cover much new ground, though his commune is just house-sharing and not body-sharing. But even so, I wanted to see what would happen and how they’d go about it.

That the story works is mostly due to the characters that just fit together perfectly, the sense of humor and the cast. They easily convey the familiarity house mates must have with each other and you can really believe that they do get along backstage as well. That’s very nice.

The performances are generally really strong. Especially Regina Fritsch and her slowly falling apart Anna, and Elisa Plüss and her overwhelmed Freja really worked for me. They also had me heartbroken and crying.

But the play wasn’t perfect. It is objectively long (over 2 hours, without break) and it also has subjective lengths. The ending left me a little unsatisfied: It came a bit abruptly (which after the play went on for so long is a little weird to say) and I would have wanted a little more closure (and happiness for Anna). But since I really liked the rest, I can overlook those shortcomings.

Summarising: Worth watching.