Using the Still Life format for an ambitious first foray as a feature director Sabrina Mertens wrote Time of Moulting split into 57 snapshots of a family holed up at home while the family matriarch drifts in and out of mental anguish.
The story centres on Stephanie seen at two stages as a child then 10 years later as a young adult. Young Stephanie (Zelda Epenchied) has to invent games playing in the dirt around the family home or board games with her mom Sybille (Freya Kerutzkam. A couple of girls her age move into the area but her mother deliberately scares them off refusing to let them in the house when Stephanie asks for permission. The specter of her grandparents is always present wither their possessions and family pictures resting in the addict. With so little to do and being confined to the home except when she goes to school, Stephanie becomes fixated on her grandmother's false teeth and her grandfather's suitcase full of butches tools especially his butcher's hatchet.
Stephanie relations with her mother is a role reversal. Her mother is often tired spending a lot of time in bed surrounded by stuffed animals. Stephanie sleeps with her mother at night and her mother appears to be heavily dependent on her bringing her meals, looking for back rubs, and as a playing companion. Her Dad Reinhardt (Bernd Wolf) is mainly interested in tinkering around the home. The family does not appear to be well off and the state of the house is cluttered moving toward hoarder status. Stephanie constantly complains about how dirty the home is which is not helped by the family cat that pees everywhere and it is mostly left to the pre-teen Stephanie to clean.
In the second act 10 years later Stephanie (now played by Mariam Schiweck) is still in the family home, never seeming to go out and seeming surrounded by more dirt, cat pee, and clutter. The family now has a small TV which her father now spends most of his time rooted in front of doing not much else. The effects of an isolated childhood take their toll on the elder Stephanie, She's now prone to verbal outbreaks, throwing things at her parents, self-harm, and unnaturally obsessing on the two items that she most associates with her grandparents have become unnatural.
Mertens puts a lot on the screen almost exclusively shot with a fixed camera in her structured directorial debut. It's a psychological exploration into an unhealthy relationship with a parent(s) can have on a child when that adult figure is all that the child sees and knows of an extended period. Even when the child is has grown with the physical capacity to exert their will their psychological scars built up over many years paralyzes them from acting.
***1/2 Out of 4.
Time of Moulting | Sabrina Mertens | Germany | 2020 | 80 Minutes.
Tags: Tableaux Vivant, Germany, 1970's Country Home, Isolation,Mental Illness, Butchers Hatchet, False Teeth, Psychological Abuse, Clutter, Hansel & Gretel.
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