Are you in the wrong film? Didn’t you expect to see a short documentary about the souvenirs of a deceased American couple? Why are they screening the opening credits of a Hollywood movie: Mia Farrow in “Rosemary’s Baby”?
Fiction and documentary reality keep clashing in this film. The hero is not Mia Farrow, but the bit player Elmer Modlin and his wife Margaret, a passionate painter. Based exclusively on found letters, photos and other documents, the director reconstructs these two people’s life stories. Having appeared in “Rosemary’s Baby” as an extra, Elmer left the States with his wife and son to move to Madrid, where they lived a reclusive life in a small flat for more than 30 years. Margret played the artist; Elmer worked as a television actor. What is left of them? An empty flat and a dustbin full of discarded souvenirs. Evidence of their lives, discovered by chance by the filmmaker on a walk through Madrid. It’s true that the most exciting stories are found in the street.

– Antje Stamer

Anita and Amadeu are still a couple, though age is definitely getting to them. They can’t escape their different habits, accomplishing everything with infinite slowness. Their only companions nowadays are the cats and the dog. She is still quick on her feet and keeps things going, while Amadeu just about manages, with effort and patience, to keep upright. Being dependent on each other, their tone gets sharper.
The whole drama of ageing is precisely sketched in a few scenes. The young filmmaker Mireia Fontanals keeps visiting the two over an extended period of time to document the same processes. Quite simple, in principle, because there are only a few locations left in the life of the couple: their home, the hospital ward, the nursing home. And there are only a few questions left open. This one for example: do you still love me?
Cornelia Klauß