Winter Sleepers

Starring:Ulrich Matthes, Marie-Lou Sellem, Floriane Daniel, Heino Ferch, Josef Bierbichler, Laura Tonke, Sophia Dirscherl, Sebastian Schipper, Saskia Vester, Werner Schnitzer, Renee Schoenberg, Simon Donatz, Jacob Donatz, Agathe Taffertshofer, Robert Meyer, Harry TÃ¤schner, RenÃ© SchÃ¶nenberger
Director: Tom Tykwer
Studio: Fox Lorber
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Amazon.com
Tom Tykwer, writer-director of the international hit Run Lola Run, shows a more pensive side with Winter Sleepers. The film examines the lives of five characters in the aftermath of an auto accident. As with Run Lola Run, Tykwer's main concern is with chance and coincidence, and the ways people unwittingly influence the course of each other's lives. Theo, a farmer, sets off to take his horse to the vet, unaware that his daughter is hidden in the trailer. Momentarily distracted, Theo swerves to avoid a sports car coming the other way and crashes into a mountain slope, critically injuring his daughter. The sports car is covered by snow, and RenÃ©, the driver, digs his way out and leaves the scene. Meanwhile translator Rebecca negotiates a stormy-but-sexy relationship with loutish ski instructor Marco, both of them unaware that Marco's stolen car was involved in the crash, and Rebecca's roommate Laura nurses the young accident victim by day and begins a tentative relationship with RenÃ© by night. While Winter Sleepers doesn't have the same manic pace as Lola, Tykwer's visual style is very much in evidence--he makes beautiful images of everything from the snow-covered Bavarian mountains to a cut finger. As it moves through a series of tiny but crucial events to a truly haunting ending, Winter Sleepers is in many ways reminiscent of Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter, both in its central plot device and in its melancholy atmosphere of fatal inevitability. --Ali Davis
Description
Tom Twyker's thriller Winter Sleepers is a haunting film about passion, emotions, love and death set in motion by a mysterious car accident. It opens with a terrible sense of foreboding, which envelopes the stillness of winter. Almost hallucinatory events begin to unfold and engulf four young people -- Laura, Marco, Rebecca and Rene -- who have little or nothing in common with each other. When local farmer Theo enters the picture, their lives change directions forever. Their paths cross only briefly, but this crossing gives new and unforeseen meaning to their lives.

Amazon.com

Tom Tykwer, writer-director of the international hit Run Lola Run, shows a more pensive side with Winter Sleepers. The film examines the lives of five characters in the aftermath of an auto accident. As with Run Lola Run, Tykwer's main concern is with chance and coincidence, and the ways people unwittingly influence the course of each other's lives. Theo, a farmer, sets off to take his horse to the vet, unaware that his daughter is hidden in the trailer. Momentarily distracted, Theo swerves to avoid a sports car coming the other way and crashes into a mountain slope, critically injuring his daughter. The sports car is covered by snow, and René, the driver, digs his way out and leaves the scene. Meanwhile translator Rebecca negotiates a stormy-but-sexy relationship with loutish ski instructor Marco, both of them unaware that Marco's stolen car was involved in the crash, and Rebecca's roommate Laura nurses the young accident victim by day and begins a tentative relationship with René by night. While Winter Sleepers doesn't have the same manic pace as Lola, Tykwer's visual style is very much in evidence--he makes beautiful images of everything from the snow-covered Bavarian mountains to a cut finger. As it moves through a series of tiny but crucial events to a truly haunting ending, Winter Sleepers is in many ways reminiscent of Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter, both in its central plot device and in its melancholy atmosphere of fatal inevitability. --Ali Davis

Description

Tom Twyker's thriller Winter Sleepers is a haunting film about passion, emotions, love and death set in motion by a mysterious car accident. It opens with a terrible sense of foreboding, which envelopes the stillness of winter. Almost hallucinatory events begin to unfold and engulf four young people -- Laura, Marco, Rebecca and Rene -- who have little or nothing in common with each other. When local farmer Theo enters the picture, their lives change directions forever. Their paths cross only briefly, but this crossing gives new and unforeseen meaning to their lives.

Customer Reviews:

Wnter Sleepers.......2007-01-22

winter sleepers is a good movie but kind of weird. I liked it ok and i can recomend it to german movie fans, especially "Heino Ferch" fans.

beautifully done.......2005-09-02

a great looking film about characters whose lives keep affecting eachother in ways that they themselves seem to be oblivious to. a film about twists of fate, winter sleepers is at parts slow and probably too clever at times for its own good, but none of this really matters. the film is hauntingly beautiful to look at, with amazing scenery, music , and atmosphere. great performances as well. just a well done, pretty film that deserves way more attention than it has received.

Not another "Run Lola Run".......2005-08-20

This is a different Tom Tykwer than I had seen in the past. "Winter Sleepers" is just as intense as "Run Lola Run" - but the intensity is unspoken - not an in-your-face adrenaline rush like "Lola."

Tykwer is the world's best living director .......2005-06-30

This is the film where you can watch Tykwer in action before he even understood his style. Nothing is as sharp as Heaven or the Princess and he indulges himself in whatever formal style he feels is appropriate to the scene. It's like the best film school class exercise I've ever had. He is remarkable.

Twists of fate.......2003-12-23

Before Tom Tykwer created international hit "Run Lola Run" (or "Lola Rennt"), he created the ponderous "Winter Sleepers" (or "Winterschläfer"). Like Tykwer's later films, this one deals with fate, destiny, death, and love. It's an interesting execution, with a flawed climax and the occasional question of "where is this going?"

Laura (Marie-Lou Sellem) arrives at her little country cottage, where her pretty friend Rebecca (Floriane Daniel) lives. Things are complicated after the first evening: while handsome but loutish Marco (Heino Ferch) is in bed with Rebecca, a strange man (Ulrich Matthes) wanders over and takes Marco's car. But when he is driving, he causes an accident that puts a child in a life-threatening coma.

The child's father (Josef Bierbichler), stricken with grief, goes on the hunt for the man who accidently killed his daughter. That man, Rene, is now in love with Laura, but can't remember anything about the accident. Rene is also inadvertantly causing cracks in Laura and Marco's fragile, tempestuous relationship. One person will die -- two will find happiness -- and one will find freedom.

"Winter Sleepers" has a lot of the same themes and feel of Tykwer's later films, but more unpolished and loosely knit together. Though we know the fates of all these people are interconnected, much of the screen time is devoted to Laura and Rene's blossoming romance, or Marco and Rebecca's deteriorating one, and not to the central theme of the movie.

The cinematography is breathtaking, with a lot of Tykwer's signatures like a camera panning in a complete circle around Rene, and a character death never being shown except by a thud and darkness. As he often does, Tykwer filmed many scenes in a portentous manner, as if every tiny event could start off something important. Perhaps the biggest problem is the conclusion. While beautifully filmed, it seems out-of-character and a bit of an easy way out, as if Tykwer wasn't entirely sure how to end the various interconnected storylines.

One thing that Tykwer does well is give humanity in subtle ways to the characters, even the stupid, cheating Marco, who is genuinely miserable and guilt-stricken after his girlfriend falls off a ledge. Matthes is instantly sympathetic as the sensitive, memory-impaired Rene. Daniel and Sellem are quite nice in their roles as, respectively, the sexpot and the quiet wannabe-actress nurse.

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