movie one

It's Beer Week and German Film Festival, together again!  To celebrate, I sought out a good German beer for my first film.  Ayinger seems to be around in bars, although I don't think I've taken advantage of its presence.  I guess I'm a little behind in the month, but I'm sure it's still perfectly ready for drinking.

It's one of those straw yellow, bubbly German beers, a little more bitter in aroma than many such examples.  The taste is reminiscent of Spaten bock, although much lighter and more spring-like, doing justice to the name.  It's bitter, but with a sweet finish that complements the beginning.  Maibock is like a little sibling to Spaten bock, with the same basic structure, but something a little more playful and shy where Spaten is confident and center stage taking.  Ayinger Maibock is pleasant and almost uplifting, a good all-arounder, but I don't know if I would use it for, say, a beer float.

Supplier: La Buena Cerveza
Price: €3.10

spoilers ahead!
The first movie of the festival was Gleißendes Glück/El éxtasis/Original Bliss.  I had wanted to see the movie shown at 5, but schedules can change in a moment, and this was on my back-up list.  So, at 9:40pm I was waiting with a good 30 other people at the door.  The movie was supposed to start at 10.  We didn't even get in until quarter after.  It seems the movie before had a question session after and the half-hour before our movie wasn't enough.  Poor planning, Palacio de la Prensa and Cine Alemán!  At least the movie was interesting.  It's the story of a middle-aged woman having a slow emotional breakdown, mourning her lost faith and suffering from insomnia.  Her husband seems patient but sometimes frustration makes him explode.  He slams her hand in a drawer after a fight and calls their family doctor to fix her up instead of taking her to a hospital, then insists, compassionately it might seem, on staying by her side to hold her other hand.  That should probably be a red flag.  The woman hears a psychologist talking on the radio about changing reality through the power of your mind, and she goes to meet him at one of his conferences.  They hit it off, going out to dinner, for drinks, he even moves to the hotel she's staying at "to hide from his fans".  When she goes to his room she sees a laptop with porn on the screen.  He explains that he's studying porn addiction to find new treatments, but it soon becomes clear that he is an addict himself.  The woman goes back to her husband, but she and the psychologist start exchanging letters and eventually he has a conference in a city near where she lives.  They meet and discuss their problems some more.  She had been sleeping well in the hotel, but at home her insomnia comes back.  The psychologist tries to quit porn and writes postcards to the woman about his progress.  Her husband finds those postcards and gives her a beating that causes her to go to the psychologist's apartment in Berlin for a few months.  They become closer, eventually, possibly, having sex.  The day after she decides to return to her husband, but insists on her own space in the house.  He fixes her up a sleeping area in the attic, like the one she says she had in her grandfather's house.  It's one of her happiest memories.  But, the first night she goes down to her husband in bed and shows her newly bald crotch.  As she returns to her bed, he leaps out of the darkness like a monster in a horror film and tries to beat her to death before killing himself with what looks like sleeping pills.  The human violence is not shown, but plates fall, windows shake, furniture breaks, and the house looks like a hurricane and an earthquake hit at the same time.  Somehow, she survives and wakes up in the hospital with the psychologist at her side.  They are about to start a loving and emotionally fulfilling relationship.

Although I'm not sure the abusive husband was a necessary part of the story, it's an interesting contrast to see an ostensibly respectful and normal man as the beast while the porn user is less a misogynistic pervert and more a considerate partner who can tell the difference between fantasy and reality.  The woman seems to be looking for emotional connection throughout the film, and her husband scoffs at her previous attempts to find peace in religion, saying she never had any faith, she just wanted to whore herself to God.  She does try to contact some divine being at different points in the film, kneeling in church or by her bed.  Mostly she asks what she should do.  Then she makes decisions that end up causing her pain.  But, her relationship with the psychologist wouldn't have prospered without those decisions, so the ends justify the means I guess?