The people in Cloud Nine are not motivated by middle class psychology, such factors as relationships with parents and emotional deprivations in childhood. Rather, their motivations emerge from their basic characters. To a surprising extent, their characters reflect elemental types. Inga, a sixty-seven year old woman, is a feeling type who works as a seamstress and is a member of a choir. She has been married for thirty years to Werner, a thinking type who likes railroads and timetables. Their daughter, Petra, is a sensate type. She has young children and favors practical solutions. Karl, Inga's lover, is an intuitive type who impulsively makes love to her when he tries on a pair of trousers that she has mended.
These types are not pure or absolute. As in everyday life, aspects of people's characters continually rub against themselves and against aspects of other people's characters. This rubbing is what the movie's about. Inga, a bright, shining, and moderately overweight woman, is delighted by her affair. Contrary to her daughter's advice, she tells her husband about it. He considers their marriage a happy one (we see nothing to contradict this) and finds it incomprehensible that she would want another lover. Inga and Werner separate. Inga moves in with Karl. Werner kills himself.
Cloud Nine's plot is the structure within which its characters interact. All dialog is improvised. The improvisation is by skilled actors who have a full understanding of the relationships among their characters. In terms of naturalness, this approach is highly successful. In a few instances, things that we expect to be there are left out. When Werner says to Inga that he assumes her affair is with a younger man, she does not tell him that Karl is nine years older than her. And no one states explicitly that Werner has killed himself. As would happen in real life, we assume it because of the way people act.
Many comments on this film, both by reviewers and by people I've talked to, involve its portrayal of nudity and sex among people in their sixties and seventies. The many close-up depictions are both graphic and discreet in ways that would be inconceivable in a Hollywood movie. The scenes stay with the viewer. Old and less than perfect bodies can be admired without cosmetic enhancement. Death's sting is unavoidable but can ultimately be accepted. The cloud nine on which Inga lives is not in outer space but is a beautiful part of nature.
These types are not pure or absolute. As in everyday life, aspects of people's characters continually rub against themselves and against aspects of other people's characters. This rubbing is what the movie's about. Inga, a bright, shining, and moderately overweight woman, is delighted by her affair. Contrary to her daughter's advice, she tells her husband about it. He considers their marriage a happy one (we see nothing to contradict this) and finds it incomprehensible that she would want another lover. Inga and Werner separate. Inga moves in with Karl. Werner kills himself.
Cloud Nine's plot is the structure within which its characters interact. All dialog is improvised. The improvisation is by skilled actors who have a full understanding of the relationships among their characters. In terms of naturalness, this approach is highly successful. In a few instances, things that we expect to be there are left out. When Werner says to Inga that he assumes her affair is with a younger man, she does not tell him that Karl is nine years older than her. And no one states explicitly that Werner has killed himself. As would happen in real life, we assume it because of the way people act.
Many comments on this film, both by reviewers and by people I've talked to, involve its portrayal of nudity and sex among people in their sixties and seventies. The many close-up depictions are both graphic and discreet in ways that would be inconceivable in a Hollywood movie. The scenes stay with the viewer. Old and less than perfect bodies can be admired without cosmetic enhancement. Death's sting is unavoidable but can ultimately be accepted. The cloud nine on which Inga lives is not in outer space but is a beautiful part of nature.