It’s about love, grief and death. In “Ein Festtag” everything revolves around the really big feelings.
Berlin – It’s Mother’s Day, a sunny spring day in Great Britain in the 1920s. On this holiday the employees of the upper-class families have time off.
But as lively as these hours could be – in this drama everyone involved struggles with social differences and the scars left by the First World War.
Jane is one of those employees in “Ein Festtag” by French director Eva Husson, a young woman who has a secret: She has an affair with Paul, the only living son of a rich family. While his parents have a picnic with friends, Jane and Paul meet secretly at his parents’ house. Your time is limited, not just on this day, because soon he is supposed to marry someone else.
Brothers, sons and fiancés who died in the war – they are no longer there, but they always play a role. The surviving parents and siblings are traumatized, but find no real space for their feelings and sadness. Instead, photos, mementos and shared experiences regularly reopen the wounds.
Odessa Young and Josh O’Connor star as Jane and Paul. Young in particular convinces with her subtle play, which shows a young woman who is only just finding her own way.
Olivia Colman and Colin Firth have rather smaller roles in “Ein Festtag”, but the two star actors fill them up as usual: How they embody their desperate, life-struggling parents are only brief moments – but they resonate.
Ein Festtag, Great Britain 2021, 110 min., FSK oA, by Eva Husson, with Odessa Young, Josh O’Connor, Olivia Colman, Colin Firth dpa
