On a cruise, from [OP] Cinn’s bucket list. Well, not in the context of today's film pick*

 

1960. On a luxury line, former prisoner Marta and her warden Liza meet again. Things had happened years before, in Auschwitz. This new confrontation reverses their roles.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for December has a few dateless themes. This is one of them.

A special soldier for National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day (USA)

“They sent me out by plane to a boarding school. But I ran away. There's a war on. I can't cram some stupid stuff when it's a war.”

– Ivan

A twelve-year old boy works as a scout for the Soviet army. His age and size make him an inoffensive figure in the war-scarred landscape. But inside, he's brooding for revenge.

 

A memorable fire or fireplace scene*

“Oh, my God, Gerald! Shall I die?”

– Gudrun Brangwen

Oddly, one barely remembers the fireplace.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for November is, again, not date-based, but follows a sloppy schmaltzy all-American Thanksgiving-y narrative. Trying to make it work my way.

“The day they put jerks into orbit, you won't stop rotating soon!”

– Comissaire Joss, le Pacha

A memorable kitchen or cooking scene*

“Look at us. We're almost totally dependent on our maid. She cooks and washes for us, and is the first person to greet me when I come home from work. She is entirely at our service.”

– Dong-sik Kim

A housemaid works her way into a middle-class household and takes over the wife's tasks – cleaning, cooking, child rearing.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for November is, again, not date-based, but follows a sloppy schmaltzy all-American Thanksgiving-y narrative. Trying to make it work my way.

A dysfunctional family*

 

On a wedding day, and night, a family's dirty secrets are laid bare.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for November is, again, not date-based, but follows a sloppy schmaltzy all-American Thanksgiving-y narrative. Trying to make it work my way.

A movie with gorgeous sweater fashion*

“She's a strange breed.”

– Jim

Throwing in a little Movember for good measure.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for November is, again, not date-based, but follows a sloppy schmaltzy all-American Thanksgiving-y narrative. Trying to make it work my way.

 

A movie that feels like autumn*

 

A family of four share the same house and live their own lives. When the parents attend a company party, the neighbour's teenage daughter reluctantly babysits the children then promptly runs off with her secret boyfriend. Left to his own devices, the bored 10-year old Achim plays a game with his little sister

“Junge, du bist ja ganz woanders!”

I Initially nomintad the RAF critique Deutschland im Herbst (1978) for today's challenge, when I realised that Bübchen too is about Germany's youth's antics and the society that planted its seeds. Here again, a repressed community dutifully finds a way to bury the terror into the fabric of mundanity. You'll find it again in Michael Haneke's Das weiße Band (2009), now foretelling the German youth that came to embrace Nazism.

 

Eternal return, ad nauseam.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for November is, again, not date-based, but follows a sloppy schmaltzy all-American Thanksgiving-y narrative. Trying to make it work my way.