Depicting real life in this way requires very skillful staging. If it succeeds, as it does in our streaming tip today on Netflix, we can expect a film that is as touching as it is warm-hearted.
Human lives are complicated. They are full of contradictions, challenges and conflicts with our fellow human beings. To present this complexity in all its anger, its disappointments, but also its hope and loving common solutions – that is no easy task.
As an actress and director, Karoline Herfurth shows great empathy for precisely this. In Wunderschön, she shows the challenges that five fundamentally different women face every day – especially with regard to their bodies. The result is cleverly thought out, humorously and emotionally written and absolutely worth seeing. Unfortunately, the film will soon disappear from Netflix.
In Wunderschön on Netflix, five women have to find themselves again
The relationship with one’s own body and one’s own self is a difficult thing. Especially as a woman, it is often impossible to keep up with all the ideals imposed by the beauty industry, society and fellow human beings. The perfect mother, the perfect sex object, the perfect, always happy partner – and all in the perfect body. Easy, isn’t it? Of course not.
Reality looks different: Leyla (Dilara Aylin Ziem) is bullied at school for her stature. Julie (Emilia Schüle) is supposedly missing “that certain something” as a model, but no one tells her what. Frauke’s (Martina Gedeck) marriage is in crisis after decades and she feels unattractive. Sonja (Herfurth) no longer has any sense of her body after giving birth twice, let alone a good one.
Meanwhile, Vicky (Nora Tschirner) is definitely not looking for love – and yet somehow she is disappointed. They all have their baggage to carry, a role to play and realize: something has to change. Because this cannot be their reality in the long term.
Streaming tip on Netflix: Wunderschön is a touching and important story full of hope
Every woman can certainly find herself in Wunderschön. Real ideals are uncovered and ruthlessly portrayed for what they are – not only for women, by the way: problems. Problems that steal joy, fuel insecurities, and create tensions.
One of the great strengths of Karoline Herfurth’s beauty is its closeness to everyday life, which can be felt in every minute of the film. The fates captured here happen every day, everywhere in Germany, everywhere in the world. It is raw and not romanticized. It is absolutely comprehensibly played and really powerfully staged. But even more important than that: there is hope in it.
As hopeless as life may often seem in such situations, there is always a step forward, even if it leads into the unknown. And this is where our fellow human beings come into play. With a conciliatory view of community, solidarity and all the friends and partners who make life so much more beautiful, the prospect of the future no longer seems so terrible.
