Paula (2016)

The film is based on Paula Modersohn-Becker’s life during her time in Worpswede and Paris, but takes some liberties for dramatic reasons. For example, it reduces her several stays in Paris to a single one and omits her encounter with Otto’s first wife, Helene, who gave birth to his daughter Elsbeth in 1898 and did not die until 1900. Instead, the story begins well before 1900, when Paula, already trained in drawing and living with her family in Bremen since 1888, decides in her early twenties to go to Worpswede. She asserts her will against her father, Carl Woldemar Becker, who would have preferred an education of the kind typical for women at the time, preparing her for the role of wife and homemaker. Her training under Fritz Mackensen does not satisfy her, so she quickly seeks her own path and befriends Clara Westhoff, who is two years younger. Later, she also meets Rainer Maria Rilke and Otto Modersohn, who has recently been left a widower and must now care for his little daughter Elsbeth alone. Otto defends Paula against Mackensen, who firmly disapproves of her powerful desire for artistic freedom. A romance develops: Otto remains hesitant, but it nevertheless leads to their marriage. Disappointed that Otto does not want to make her a “woman”—and thus a mother—Paula eventually runs away to Paris, to Clara and Rilke, after five years of marriage. Otto allows this; in a letter, he even tells her she may have a lover, while reaffirming his own love all the more strongly. He supports her to such an extent that the Worpswede artists’ colony is on the brink of a serious rift, as Mackensen fears so deeply for its reputation. Otto’s declarations of love leave Paula outwardly unmoved: she replies only when she needs money, and does in fact begin a new affair. When Otto himself travels to Paris to persuade her to return and turns up at her door without warning, Paula initially sends him away to avoid an encounter with her lover. A meeting the following day ends in an argument and what seems to be a final separation. But after Rilke gives him an urgent piece of advice, Otto visits his wife once more and, while she is still asleep, takes a quiet look at her paintings. He realizes that he was wrong and that she really is on her way to becoming a great artist. He leaves a substantial sum of money for her and quietly leaves the apartment. When Paula finds the money, she is in turn so deeply moved by Otto’s selfless love that, grateful and remorseful, she goes to see him at his hotel. There they reconcile passionately and, after years, finally sleep together. Happy and pregnant, Paula returns to Worpswede. But the birth is extremely difficult—which Otto had secretly always feared and which had led him to abstain from sex for so long—and leaves Paula so weak that she dies shortly afterward.