Geschlossene Gesellschaft (1978)

The Berlin couple Ellen and Robert—she a youth counselor, he an engineer—travel with their five-year-old son Nicky, outside the holiday season, to a remote, newly renovated country house. Two couples they are friends with plan to join them. But one cancels by telegram because of work, while the other ends up in the hospital after a traffic accident. Worried about their condition, Robert visits them there and runs into his friend Alf, who is only slightly injured. Alf shamelessly confesses that he regrets not being able to use the holiday to “fuck” Ellen; after all, she is hardly “spoiled” in the marital bed. Ellen’s unexpected lack of embarrassment at Alf’s intentions seems not to trouble Robert much either. But appearances are deceptive. From the very first evening, cracks begin to show, deepening all the more because the couple are involuntarily left alone together. Until then, Robert had always made sure they had company—and convinced Ellen that she wanted it. But their rapidly escalating argument reveals that he was using this to distract from his own problem: he is in a deep crisis, which he is hiding out of shame. For a moment, he overcomes it and confesses two lies he has been living: the “successful experiments” he had recently claimed would yield savings worth millions have long since ceased to exist; he is burned out professionally. And when insecurity about his “manhood” was added to the mix, he had an affair. Now Ellen’s carefree mood is gone too. She responds with mockery to pay him back for hurting her, but she also keeps probing for details about his affairs. For herself, she wants to explore one aspect of her unfulfilled sexual desire more closely: her preferences. This becomes apparent in her affair with the brother of one of her former charges. Just as she arrives at the apartment they share, the young men are in the middle of a physical altercation; in the still-charged atmosphere that follows, a passionate sexual encounter develops, then breaks off prematurely, revealing that Ellen both resists and provokes the violence inflicted on her. The end of the holiday is marked by a cautious rapprochement between Ellen and Robert. Karl, the caretaker of the country house and a former physicist, has considerable influence on this. Thoughtful, attentive, and kind, he has a calming effect on their irritated tempers. At the same time, he shows them by example what should take precedence over their search for self-understanding: their responsibility as parents. His willingness to indulge little Nicky’s wishes, bringing happiness to everyone, suggests that the mysterious difficulty walking that the five-year-old occasionally pretends to have should be understood as an appeal to the adults. “Have we grown wiser?” Robert asks at last, to which Ellen replies, “I don’t know. Maybe different.”