Once were Rebels (2019) by Johanna Moder - Review

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by Johanna Moder

grade: 6.5

Once were Rebels immediately presents itself as an ambivalent feature film. If, on the one hand, comedy and paradox reign for almost the entire running time of the film, on the other hand, it soon becomes an analysis of love and family relationships, as well as of the living conditions of some refugees from Russia, who are wanted solely for having tried to defend their freedom.

From Russia with passion

A friend needs help. What to do? Surely, it will have happened to everyone to lend a hand, from time to time, to a friend in difficulty. Yet sometimes, from seemingly simple situations, one can find oneself in completely unexpected circumstances. And this is exactly what happened to Helene (played by Julia Jentsch), the protagonist of Once were Rebels (original title: Waren einmal Revoluzzer), the most recent work by director Johanna Moder, which should have been part of the official selection of the Diagonale 2020, cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Helena is happily married and has two daughters. After several years she receives a phone call from Russia from Pawel, her ex-boyfriend, who urgently needs money in order to get a permit to return to Austria. Helena will take advantage of the fact that Volker (Marcel Mohab), a mutual friend of theirs, has to travel to Moscow on business, to send Pawel the necessary money. Still having feelings for him, she will take advantage of her husband’s (Manuel Rubey) absence and send her daughters to their grandparents’, in order to host him for a few days at her place. After picking him up at the station, however, she discovers that the man has arrived in Austria with his wife and newborn son. What to do to convince him and his noisy family to leave her home?

Once were Rebels immediately presents itself as an ambivalent feature film. If, on the one hand, comedy and paradox reign for almost the entire running time of the film, on the other hand, it soon becomes an analysis of love and family relationships, as well as of the living conditions of some refugees from Russia, who are wanted solely for having tried to defend their freedom.

No one is really innocent in Once were Rebels. Not even Helena herself, guilty of settling into a tried-and-tested comfort zone while clearly desiring an extra-marital affair with her ex. But, at the same time, there are also characters who are gradually given a new meaning, such as, above all, Pawel’s wife herself, seemingly arrogant and spoilt, but who turns out to have been a heroine in her own country.

In short, every certainty we are initially given is, during the film, totally overturned. And Johanna Moder, for her part, has succeeded in bringing to life a script (in collaboration with Marcel Mohab and Manuel Rubey) that is generally plaesant, which only towards the end seems to want to seek at all costs a hasty and not very credible solution. A script that, alongside tragicomic sketches, examines human relationships and points the finger at the upper middle class and its surface behaviour. No one knows himself or herself in depth, nor those who live by their side. Not even when one is a psychologist, like Volker himself and his father, played by Josef Hader, here in a friendly participation.

This desire to examine human relationships and feelings, among other things, reminds us closely of Woody Allen’s cinema. Especially if we think of the many paradoxical situations staged. But this, if you like, is a double-edged sword. “Spoiled” by a cinema that is light and irreverent, sharp and at times politically incorrect, but also incredibly deep and introspective like that of the New York director, we cannot help but be disappointed every time we see a product that wants to emulate him in some way, but which inevitably ends up being much weaker than it initially seemed. And this, unfortunately, is also the risk run by Once were Rebels: an enjoyable film, even though not without its imperfections, which would certainly have benefited from a greater deepening of some characters (especially with regard to the noisy Russian family) and which would only score points if not compared to similar films made in the past. But that, in fact, would be a different story.