The everyday life of a nurse looks like a nerve-wracking thriller in the drama Heroine with Leonie Benesch. This article explains why it is worth seeing.
Heldin is just over 90 minutes long and Leonie Benesch appears in almost every minute. You could almost think that the actress from Das Lehrerzimmer and Babylon Berlin has merged with the camera, so closely does the film follow her character Floria at work in a hospital. She shows how she opens ampoules of painkillers and draws it into syringes; how she ticks off items on her checklist as she rushes from one patient room to the next; and how she methodically disinfects her hands, using the same pumping movements on the dispenser that she has perfected over the years.
All of this is documented in Heldin with the same attention to detail as if Floria were a magician performing her masterpiece. Only she does it every day. The film title already suggests it: for once, we are supposed to see the heroine in Heldin with such eyes.
Heldin takes up one of the most important topics of our time
Heldin opens in German cinemas at the end of the month and made a stopover at the 75th Berlinale. The issue of the nursing care crisis also moved this festival edition. In the Brazilian future vision The Blue Trail, pensioners are put in camps to increase the productivity of young people. In the Panorama film Zikaden by Ina Weisse, Nina Hoss struggles with the growing helplessness of her on-screen parents. Home Sweet Home, also part of the Panorama, could easily be seen as a Danish counterpoint to Heldin. It shows the everyday life of a carer for the elderly who is almost consumed by her job.
Heroine’s scope sets the film apart from the rest: it “only” tells the story of a late shift in a Swiss hospital. Floria comes to work, works and goes home. Her private life remains hidden in hints. She shows up at the ward full of enthusiasm and wearing new sneakers, gets updates on all the patients she has to visit in the following hours. Let’s go.
Tension is gradually built
Heroin doesn’t play out in real time, but thanks to the compressed narrative style, the film soon feels like it. The story essentially follows the patients that Floria has to “check off” by the end of her shift, but it is repeatedly interrupted. One patient has to be transferred from one floor to another to avoid falling out of the time frame for an operation, while another has an MRI appointment but can’t get off his cell phone. Others need painkillers, help eating or simply two minutes with someone who is more interested in them than in their diagnosis. Floria juggles medication, thermometers, syringes and switches in seconds from being an admirable organizer to a compassionate comforter.
Floria moves confidently through the maze of tasks most of the time, but as the hours tick by, the pressure mounts. The little problems on the sidelines suddenly come to a head. Bit by bit, the tension mounts to the point where it becomes nerve-wracking. Then you can literally feel the fine line between Floria’s stamina and the looming collapse.
The film’s concept is half the battle for both a gripping drama and raising awareness of how societies (whether in Switzerland, Germany or elsewhere) value the work of caregivers. Leonie Benesch takes care of the rest.
One film, one hospital shift, one fabulous Leonie Benesch
When Benesch appears, chances are good that her characters are energized and that energy is transmitted to the audience across the screen or television. She succeeded in this in her tragic supporting role in Babylon Berlin, as an idealistic teacher in Das Lehrerzimmer and most recently as a nervous translator in the factual thriller September 5.
If the script calls for a nervous ordeal, a glance into her eyes is enough to convince us of her heroine’s inner strength. Even better: with her large, clear eyes, she almost automatically demands the empathy of the audience – before you know it, you are drawn into the emotional whirlpool of her character. Looking away is impossible. Where colleagues would resort to ticks or other eccentric gestures, Benesch almost works like a canvas within a canvas.
How she manages this can be seen again in Heldin (Hero) by director Petra Volpe, which at times turns into an extremely intense and immersive cinematic experience. At times, the film even feels like a documentary, so close and lifelike it moves through the hospital. Unfortunately, this effect is diminished towards the end by some script decisions that give the film, Floria and her patients an all too neat and tidy story.
However, when the work speaks for itself – and that happens for the most part of the runtime – then the heroine and especially Leonie Benesch find a greatness that does justice to the profession, which is far too rarely addressed.
