What comes next, after love? „The search” say Susanne and Klaus. “A new love”, say Hanne and Peter. Four people who, despite their advanced age, refuse to stay alone and want to share their life with a partner. “Liebe für Fortgeschrittene “ – two films with stories about searching and finding.
Hanne and Peter have achieved the improbable: they have found each other, despite living miles apart: Hanne in the vicinity of Stuttgart and Peter up north on the coast of the Baltic Sea. It came about the old fashioned way, with a newspaper ad. Now they are newly in love, at age 70 and 68 and want to move in together as soon as possible. Both are widows and didn’t really expect this to happen anymore. Now they simply want to enjoy this new feeling as much as they can. But not all are happy about this: her son Thorsten has difficulty accepting the “new guy” at his mother’s side. Hanne’s daughter Conny would prefer it if she stayed close by, so she could care for her mother in the event of illness.
But the pair won’t let any of this get in their way. And so Hanne, the former nurse, sells her apartment, packs her bags and moves up north to Peter, the old sea-dog, as she refers to him. Close to the Danish border they find a house, where they can live out the rest of their lives.
This, however, is not yet the happy ending, as they soon realize how difficult it is to adapt to the needs and expectations of a different person, after having lived so much of their life with someone else. The filmmaker Marisa Middleton has documented this struggle in a funny, entertaining and intelligently observing film.
LIEBE FÜR FORTGESCHRITTENE
Two-parter by Marisa Middleton
Germany 2014, 45, HD
PRODUCTION COMPANY
Produced by INDI FILM for SWR