In a movie world, the society is divided between the upper class (the leading roles), the middle class (the supporting roles) and the lower class (the outtakes). Paulina (16) is a supporting role who attends a school for leading roles, but her mother hides from her information about her missing father Feinmann, alleging only that he was a leading role who was killed. Paulina starts searching for him, and goes into the ghetto where the outtakes people live, who all have errors (their faces are black and white, their sound is off), and makes friends with Simon. Paulina discovers that her father was actually an outtake who left her mother disappointed that Paulina was also born black and white. After abandoning taking pills, Paulina's skin turns into black and white. Her mother gives her a make up to cover it, and Paulina performs at the school using an emotional monologue. When she reveals she is black and white, the crowd protests, but then other people also reveal they are outtakes and imperfect, hiding among the society.
Sophie Linnenbaum's feature length directorial debut is a bizarre, but unusual and refreshingly different movie for German cinema. By setting this unusual concept into a movie world divided by hierachy into the upper class (the leading roles, living in mansions), the middle class (the supporting roles, living in residential buildings) and the lower class (the outtakes, living in ghettos), Linnenbaum crafts a metafilm satire that frequently breaks the fourth wall and contemplates about the meaningless divide between people in any society, when everyone has his or her own path, and about discrimnation. The outtakes people are a symbol for people living on the margins, and thus either have black and white skin or film errors (for instance, Simon constantly suffers from jump cuts inside the scene, meandering left and right inside the frame, while Paulina just sits there normally). Other metafilm jokes are also noteworthy—for instance, Paulina reads out the letter from her dad, and his voice is heard off screen, as a narrator, but then he just directly adresses her: "Since you can hear my voice, might as well talk with you, anyway. Please, skip this next scene"—cue to the next scene of Paulina going to a house, seeing her dad who formed a new family with someone else, and then just leaving disappointed. However, the movie feels a bit too artificial and schematic, focusing almost exclusively only on this concept, without much other "universal" ideas that the viewers can cling on to. One rare exemption is when Simon is throwing small stones at Paulina's window at night, but she just appears behind him, having returned from the city. "The Ordinaries" are overlong and overstretched, lacking some higher intensity or engagement in the finale, yet the story is clever, whereas Fine Sendel delivers a great leading role performance as Paulina, ironically the supporting role girl.
Grade:++
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