Discovering new filmmakers at the beginning of their careers and watching productions that surprise with quality and original vision is one of the joys of cinema lovers. I was well inspired to decide to watch ‘Equinox‘ (the original title is ‘Tagundnachtgleiche‘), a German film that doesn’t have a very high rating on IMDB and that didn’t offer me any known names on the poster. The very pleasant surprise was to find a story about love and loneliness with convincing heroes who manage to involve us in their lives, with a well-written script in which reality and fantasy, love and death, light and shadows alternate and find a balance, like the days and nights at the time of the equinox in the title. It’s director Lena Knauss‘ 2020 debut film, but there’s nothing to suggest that it’s a rookie film.
Alexander is about 30 years old and repairs bicycles, although he has a musical training that he puts on the back burner, content to listen day and night to a music station that broadcasts classical music. From the window of his apartment he begins to notice a young and beautiful woman from an apartment in the neighboring building. One evening he decides to follow her and ends up in a night club (called ‘Echinox’) where the girl, named Paula, is a dancer. They have a stormy one-night stand, but in the morning the woman kicks him out. Then, she disappears. To his despair, he learns that she died in an accident. Missing the woman he had known for only one night makes him build around this relationship events that mix reality with fantasy. At Paula’s grave, he meets Marlene, her older sister, who also happens to be a presenter on the radio station Alexander was listening to. A bizarre love triangle is born, in which Alexander continues to be in love with the woman who had died. What sense would a relationship between Alexander and Marlene make? Paula is always between and with them, in memories and in fantasy.
I liked the way the story was built, with a gradual evolution of the man’s relationships with the two sisters. The mixture between night and day, between fantasy and reality is also excellently captured by the image signed by Katharina Bühler. Music also plays an important role in the story, of course. The two lead actors excellently interpret the roles entrusted to them. Thomas Niehaus starts from the carelessness of an average man, in danger of losing his chance to love, to slide into passion, fantasy, despair. Sarah Hostettler as Marlene tries to be a counterpoint of reality to Alexander’s unrequited passion, she constantly seems to know more than she is letting on – both about her sister and about Alexander – but she has to manage and maybe sacrifice her own feelings to save the man. Sensitively written and beautifully shot, ‘Equinox‘ offers an interesting cinematic experience, and launches a female director and several actors that I hope to meet again soon in other films on the screens.