The Official Selection presents the international premiere of the German film, Original Bliss, this evening. This non-traditional psychological romance was filmed by the director, Sven Taddicken, according to Scottish author A. L. Kennedy's successful title. Actors Ulrich Tukur and Johannes Krisch are guests at the KVIFF.
Unlike the literary version, this strong psychological study of three characters takes place entirely in Germany. "We had to move the story from Glasgow to Stuttgart in order to be able to finance the film. That didn't matter at all, though, since it is a universal story," said director Sven Taddicken by way of explanation. As to creating the screenplay, he added: "The author made no comment in respect of the screenplay. She only said that she had written the story a long time ago, in 1997, and that it was now up to us to take it and make a film out of it. However, that statement laid a hard task before me. I felt fully responsible for it."
At the press conference with the director was one of the leading actors, Ulrich Tukur, well-known for his role in such films as The White Ribbon. He himself was slightly surprised by Original Bliss in its final form: "There was far more humour in the film than I had expected. It contains several violent scenes, and that very humour is, I think, what helped people cope with them. I saw it as a film about two people who have understood something and thereby liberated themselves," the actor summarised.
As to the film's punchline, he agreed with Taddicken, who commented on the creative means by which he wanted to achieve this tone: "I knew the dialogue had to play a central role and that things didn't have to be explicitly demonstrated. To the contrary: I wanted to express the personality gap through discourse and radical characters. In my opinion, dialogue induces a stronger experience for the audience than visual scenes."
