Chapter 7
Zurich Roses: Andrea Staka’s Das Fräulein (2006)
Lesley C. Pleasant
Andrea Staka’s Das Fräulein (2006) is not a political film about globalization and its discontents. It does not judge its three main characters, but rather, asks its viewers to see them as Orhan Pamuk regards them in his novel: with “compassion for their fear and insecurity,” understanding their processes of coming to terms with displacement. The Swiss director focuses on the geographic and emotional boundary crossings of three expatriate women from the former Yugoslavia, “charting a complex renegotiation of identity.” (Fleming 2007) Winner of the Golden Leopard at the Locarno International Film Festival in 2006, Das Fräulein deals with the space between “[d]welling/[d]rifting,” as Serbian Ruža (Mirjana Karanović), Croatian Mila (Ljubica Jović), and Bosnian Ana (Marija Škaričić) push each other to confront the uncanny that their respective ideas of home have become. Their temporary community embodies the transitory and unsettling nature of ‘feeling at home,’ as well as the resilience of home-seekers’ ability to re-think home, to find the familiar in the unfamiliar in their present time and space.
Films discussed in Chapter 7:
Das Fräulein. Directed by Andrea Staka. Dschoint Ventschr Filmproduktion AG Switzerland, 2006.
Films discussed in Chapter 7:
Das Fräulein. Directed by Andrea Staka. Dschoint Ventschr Filmproduktion AG Switzerland, 2006.
Trailer of the film Das Fräulein (Source: YouTube)
About the author:
Lesley C. Pleasant teaches as an Associate Professor of German at the University of Evansville. She received her Ph.D. in German Literature from the University of Virginia. Her interests include German theater/drama and film, specifically Bergfilme, Wendefilme, and marginal cinema. Her recent publications include articles on Yilmaz Arslan’s Brudermord (2005); a review of Knigge’s Hemingway und die Deutschen in The Hemingway Review; and entries in the forthcoming Directory of World Cinema: Germany 2 (edited by Michelle Langford). She is currently working on the uses of color in Misselwitz’ Herzsprung (1992) and a comparison of Borchert’s Draussen vor der Tür (1947) and Wyler’s Best Years of our Lives (1947).
Lesley C. Pleasant teaches as an Associate Professor of German at the University of Evansville. She received her Ph.D. in German Literature from the University of Virginia. Her interests include German theater/drama and film, specifically Bergfilme, Wendefilme, and marginal cinema. Her recent publications include articles on Yilmaz Arslan’s Brudermord (2005); a review of Knigge’s Hemingway und die Deutschen in The Hemingway Review; and entries in the forthcoming Directory of World Cinema: Germany 2 (edited by Michelle Langford). She is currently working on the uses of color in Misselwitz’ Herzsprung (1992) and a comparison of Borchert’s Draussen vor der Tür (1947) and Wyler’s Best Years of our Lives (1947).