Morgen ist auch noch ein Tag, wenn du willst [literally: Tomorrow is another day, if you want]
Director: David Gräber
Writer: Andreas Neu
Cast: Hannah Zieziula, Christina Völz, Bo Anderl
Part of: Transition Queer Filmfestival
Seen on: 11.7.2021

Plot:
Claudia (Hannah Zieziula) and Marcus (Bo Anderl) have been dating for a while, but their relationship isn’t at its best anymore. Marcus feels that Claudia is distant, so he seeks to reconnect with his ex-girlfriend Jana (Christina Völz). What he doesn’t know is that Claudia is distant because she, too, met Jana and fell in love with her – and vice versa. Marcus, living out of his van, takes turn staying with the two women, but he can’t stop them both from turning away from him.

Postcards from Sicily didn’t work for me. I found it very tiring and couldn’t get into the story or the characters.

Postcards from Sicily is a rather stylized film. Dialogues are delivered in a very artificial manner and are often rather abrupt, people use old telephones for no real reason and the film is stripped of almost all context from the characters outside of their relationships with each other, albeit not always clear. For example, the program said that Jana was Marcus’ sister – when they start fucking, that’s pretty confusing for a moment.

This stylized and intentionally “unnatural” approach to the the stories and the characters can work (it reminded me a little of Das melancholische Mädchen in that regard), but it’s not easy to pull off, and in this instance it didn’t work for me.

I think my biggest issue was Marcus. I just didn’t care about him, and much like Claudia and Jana, I didn’t think that he had much space in that story. Unlike Claudia and Jana, though, I was unwilling to give him any space at all. And I didn’t understand why they continued to do so. If it had just been a story about Claudia and Jana, I think it would have worked for me, but the film focuses on Marcus a lot and I found it just irritating.

The film certainly has a distinct style (and Jana’s apartment was really awesome). Gräber is still pretty young and hasn’t made many movies yet. So it will be interesting to see what he continues to do. But this film just isn’t where it should be yet.

Summarizing: shows some promise, but doesn’t work.