GESPENSTER (GHOST)

Germany, 2005, 85 minutes, Colour.
Julia Hummer, Sabine Timoteo, Marianne Basler, Aurelian Recoing, Benno Furmann.
Directed by Christian Petzold.

Troubled girls, this time teenage, are the subject of Christian Petsold’s Ghosts. Nina lives in a shelter and has a job working as a park cleaner. When she sees a young woman, Toni, being assaulted, she helps her and they begin an on-again, off-again friendship. When she is expelled from the shelter, the two set up home. Complications occur when a depressed mother, always searching for her dead daughter, claims the girl as her own – which the girl herself wants. The other in the meantime does an audition of a director and goes off with him.

Slight but well acted, especially by Julia Hummer as Nina, a slice of street life in a German city.

1.The title, the suggestion of the supernatural? The film grounded in reality and the mental condition of the woman searching for her daughter?

2.The urban settings, the hotel, the hostel, the studio, the parks, the streets? The classic style of film-making combined with modern perceptions?

3.The structure: the couple, Pierre and Francoise, Nina and her life, the encounter with Toni?

4.Nina, her age, work, witness, the earring? The shirt, the rubbish? The hostel, the diary? The rescue of Toni? The kiss? Shoplifting? The encounter with Francoise? Stealing? The audition and the story, the party, the night? Francoise wanting her to be her daughter?

5.Francoise, her life, relationship with her husband? The talking, the room, the story? The video? Leaving the hotel? Nina, the money?

6.Toni, the park, her type? The encounter with Nina? The breakfast? Off and on relationship? Her using her? The end?

7.The hostel lady and her treatment of the girls?

8.The men in the park and their behaviour?

9.The auditor, his wife? The family relationship?

10.The culmination, Toni and Pierre and their thinking that Francoise was mistaken? Francoise and her wanting the girl to be her daughter? Nina and her uncertainty?