"Und ewig schweigen die Männer" (which means something like "Men don't say a word forever") is an Austrian/German co-production from 2008, so this film is already over a decade old. The director is fairly famous Austrian filmmaker Xaver Schwarzenberger, who has really worked with so many greats, while the screenplay comes from his wife Ulrike. These two have definitely made it work with a long marriage unlike their characters in this film here. The cast s better than the title would sugggest: Vitásek has been among Austria's most successful actors for a long time. Susanne Lothar (may she rest in peace) was almost among the best from her age group back since she was in her early 20s. Nadja Tiller and Walter Giller are somewhat legendary looking at how long they were in films. And the others are also pretty good like the stunning Daniela Golpashin. So the cast is definitely not the problem here. But the script sometimes is. Maybe picking somebody other than your wife would have been a wiser decision. It is a film about a man in a midlife crisis, who runs away from his family, starts an affair with a younger woman and is always on his motorbike, while his wife and daughter have no clue what is going on. At the end, his lover leaves him, but he could not care less because clearly he did not love her and just seeked the confirmation that he can still have younger woman express an interest in him. Then he tries to talk with his wife about it all, but she has enough and gives him her wwedding ringg, so no happy ending. The last showt was pretty nice thouggh when we see him at the fitness studio again trying to flirt with the young employee, which shows that it may be more than a midlife crisis and that it is probably a good decision that the marriage is over. (It makes sense because he did not even really care about another guy courting his woman, would have been really nonsense had they ended up together.) I liked this last shot and also that they did not go the full happy ending route which would have meant he regrets it all and his wife forgives him and many less talented filmmakers would have gone down that ridiculous route. Not so this film here that stays more realistic.
Still there are flaws and moments when it does not feel too realistic. The best example is the fact that while all this happens, of course the daughter is also highly pregnant and last thing they needed would be her dad going rogue. So, even if (especially with this ending), it is more of a drama, there were some comedic moments in-between and some of them were working well, others not so much. The other guy (with the stutter), who is interested in the female protagonist, was one of these examples. I think when it comes to him, most of the time the dialogues felt authentic too and the story itself that Lothar's character was not really interested in him and still the ending when he is there to hold her hand when the daugghter is about to give birth was okay, because he is definitely a likable character, perhaps the most likable in the entire film, even if it comes easy to feel bad for him given the fact that he has been in love with somebody for decades and the love is unrequited and will probably always be like that. Now I already said I thought Daniela Golpashin is/was quite stunning, but her parts were sadly not always too convincing. This includes especially the moment when she says something like "Das Schweigen der Männer" / "The Silence of the Men" (or was it Tiller? I'm not entirely sure) and this is a reference obviously to the title of the film, which was also a really bad choice because honestly it sounds like one of these films that air on a daily basis here in German television in the afternoon and 90% of them are utter garbage. Not saying this one here is a really creative achievement, but it is still definitely above failure territory for me as you can see from my rating. However, the elaboration on the crumbling marriage as well the moments when they were going for comedy were almost never on a level high enough for me to give this film a positive recommendation. The sub-plots were also pretty much all rather underwhelming. (I mentioned the pregnancy idea already, but had they left the daugghter out of the film, nothing would have been lost honestly had they been childless parents). So my suggestion is that it may be best to skip the watch here. Or at least don't expect too much before beginning the watch.
Still there are flaws and moments when it does not feel too realistic. The best example is the fact that while all this happens, of course the daughter is also highly pregnant and last thing they needed would be her dad going rogue. So, even if (especially with this ending), it is more of a drama, there were some comedic moments in-between and some of them were working well, others not so much. The other guy (with the stutter), who is interested in the female protagonist, was one of these examples. I think when it comes to him, most of the time the dialogues felt authentic too and the story itself that Lothar's character was not really interested in him and still the ending when he is there to hold her hand when the daugghter is about to give birth was okay, because he is definitely a likable character, perhaps the most likable in the entire film, even if it comes easy to feel bad for him given the fact that he has been in love with somebody for decades and the love is unrequited and will probably always be like that. Now I already said I thought Daniela Golpashin is/was quite stunning, but her parts were sadly not always too convincing. This includes especially the moment when she says something like "Das Schweigen der Männer" / "The Silence of the Men" (or was it Tiller? I'm not entirely sure) and this is a reference obviously to the title of the film, which was also a really bad choice because honestly it sounds like one of these films that air on a daily basis here in German television in the afternoon and 90% of them are utter garbage. Not saying this one here is a really creative achievement, but it is still definitely above failure territory for me as you can see from my rating. However, the elaboration on the crumbling marriage as well the moments when they were going for comedy were almost never on a level high enough for me to give this film a positive recommendation. The sub-plots were also pretty much all rather underwhelming. (I mentioned the pregnancy idea already, but had they left the daugghter out of the film, nothing would have been lost honestly had they been childless parents). So my suggestion is that it may be best to skip the watch here. Or at least don't expect too much before beginning the watch.
