Fallen (2006)

After 14 years, five friends meet again for a funeral in their old hometown. They spend the following two days together, talking about the past, hinting at how their lives have turned out in the meantime, and continually forming and revising impressions of themselves and one another. The women have reached very different places in life: Brigitte, a politically active teacher; Carmen, a successful actress; Alex, a fun-loving counselor at an employment office; Nina, an unemployed woman who is pregnant; and Nicole, a prison inmate on day release, who has brought her daughter Daphne along. “We are free” was once the friends’ motto. At the funeral reception after the burial of their former physics teacher, they cautiously feel one another out at first. They end up at the wedding reception of an old acquaintance, held in a marquee on an idyllic meadow. There, Nina becomes the focus of a jealous scene by the bride. The women then all head to a country disco, where further complications arise. As the night wears on and after they have had quite a bit to drink, the women become more open and direct. At dawn, they first return to the meadow, have breakfast at a fast-food restaurant, and rest at one of the women’s apartments. The events provide the backdrop for conversations through which a picture of the women and their relationships with one another takes shape. The film was shot in Vienna, Horn, and Wiener Neustadt.