Two Mothers (Zwei Mütter) | Anne Zohra Berrached | May 30, 2013 (Germany)
Hello there! I’m new to the Monday Morning Matinee crew, and am thrilled to be coming to you from Rochester, NY where I have been attending the 21st Annual ImageOut Film Festival, New York State’s premiere LGBT film festival featuring films produced by, for, and about the gay and lesbian community from all over the globe.
My personal experience with ImageOut began last night with the screening of Anna Zohra Berrached’s “Two Mothers (Zwei Mütter)” a German drama about a young middle-aged lesbian couple struggling to become parents. Katja (Sabine Wolf) and Isa (Karina Plachetka) are a married couple living in Southern Germany. Their means are humble yet livable, and at 43 and 37 (respectively), they decide it is time to bring a child into their life.
They agree to pursue artificial insemination as opposed to adoption, and that Isa will carry the child. The only terms of the arrangement are that the sperm donor will agree to have zero contact with the child after birth. As their journey begins, so does their struggle as both women come to discover that German law has made it virtually impossible for lesbian couples to qualify for sperm donation. After months of failed attempts, Isa and Katja finally find a sperm donor willing to help them, but with the condition that he be given access to the child every three months. In their desperation, the would-be mothers must decide whether or not to compromise and accept the presence of a third parent in their child’s life.
The film is at once both extremely heartwarming yet devastating. Sabine Wolf and Karina Plachetka give stunning performances as the central characters, whose struggles are realized by the actors with subtlety and honesty. As an audience member, I found myself arriving at conclusions as the characters did, moving totally organically with the flow of the film; a credit to the writing, acting, and directing.
It begins as Isa’s story of a woman desperate to become pregnant, but ends as Katja’s journey of retaining relevance in a relationship never meant to have room for three, an issue that I have never seen explored more beautifully in a lesbian film and rarely discussed in the context of LGBT politics, then again I suppose it is not a political issue: when a lesbian couple seeks to have a child via artificial insemination, it assumes one woman to be the mother and the other to be…what? At best, a kind of father-mother. Katja, from the very beginning, is thrilled by the prospect of assuming such a role. But as the film progresses, so does her and our understanding of the impossibility of that future.
Their relationship becomes strained by the presence of Flo (Florian Weber), their sperm donor, a charismatic young man with all the right qualities to give your child. Isa becomes infatuated with him, not in a sexual way but with giddy excitement that this is the person giving her the gift she has so desperately waited for. A gift her partner is incapable of giving. And indeed that is the film’s ultimate discussion: not the struggle of infertility and the legal restrictions imposed by an archaic and homophobic government philosophy, but the much more human and emotional struggle that gay couples looking to have children must face: What happens to the partner who is not the parent? The film answers that question for us in a way that challenges its audience, but forces them to think about the reality of sucha situation. If the choice is to compromise your rules or not have a child at all, what really are the options?
I feel very privileged to have seen this film. As a young gay woman, it is important that more films such as these are made. This is not about any political agenda or the struggle for LGBT rights. It’s about two people who love each other attempting to find a place for a child and a stranger in their relationship, a decision gay couples must face every day, and as this film and its leads so beautifully illustrate, that journey has only to do with the people, not the politics, involved.
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