08/07/2024 - A little girl outgrows her dysfunctional mother in this familiar yet serviceable drama by Ulrike Kofler

Bad mothers, poor children – some people are so quick to judge, so quick to look down on a pregnant party girl surrounded by three kids, with a fourth on the way. Director Ulrike Kofler doesn’t judge. But she also doesn’t pretend that everything is great in little Gina’s family. This time around, the kids are not alright.

Just like in the recent, KVIFF-premiered Tiny Lights [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Beata Parkanová
film profile], in Gina – world-premiering at the Munich Film Festival – they understand much more than the adults give them credit for. They hear the yells and the loud music in the middle of the night, they hear their mother’s boyfriend stating that he “doesn’t give a fuck about the kids”. He is not a “family man”, you see.

It’s an anxious environment, and things are just getting worse. Kofler focuses on nine-year-old Gina (Emma Lotta Simmer) but also shows that some patterns tend to repeat themselves. Her mum (Marie-Luise Stockinger), still very young, ends up mirroring her own mother’s choices. When angry, she repeats her exact words, too. What’s heartbreaking is that these grown women, so similar to each other, don’t offer each other any support. Or even any love, which is probably why one of them looks for it in all the wrong places.

As a result, her child is forced to pay attention to pretty much everything – her mother’s drinking, her siblings – but she is bound to fail. Still, “failing” her mother could actually be a good thing, a nice lady from the child protection services tells Gina. That’s how you break patterns that otherwise could continue forever, because her mother, depressed and lonely, simply “doesn’t care any more”. Her boyfriend isn’t answering his phone, and her newborn is already with a new family. She is blasting that damned music to annoy the neighbours, sure, but also to show everyone that she’s still there.

Frankly, it all feels very familiar – even Gina’s mum’s bleached hair, very Marion Cotillard in Angel Face [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] – but at least Kofler proves herself to be an apt director of children. These are good performances, very understated, and they communicate a whole lot of pain and confusion, even when the person concerned is munching on yet another pizza. For Gina, it’s really now or never – if nothing changes at home, this pain will swallow her up. Frustrated, she attacks another child at a swimming pool. It’s a dark moment, maybe one of the most intriguing in the whole film, and it’s a shame Kofler doesn’t explore it further.

Gina was produced by Austria’s Film AG Produktion GmbH. It is sold overseas by Picture Tree International.