Letting go

Barbara Sukowa on We’re Not Done Yet, White Noise and the upcoming Leibniz film

by Anne-Katrin Titze

Barbara Sukowa with Anne-Katrin Titze on Edgar Reitz and Leibniz  “I really wanted to do this just to honour him. He's a great filmmaker. And it was fun.”
Barbara Sukowa with Anne-Katrin Titze on Edgar Reitz and Leibniz “I really wanted to do this just to honour him. He's a great filmmaker. And it was fun.”

In the second instalment on We’re Not Done Yet (a highlight of the Sundance Film Festival), following our conversation with co-directors Sofia Camargo and Joseph Longo, with music producer and 99 Records founder Ed Bahlman, Barbara Sukowa discusses her role as the mother to her real-life son Joseph Longo (who also wrote the script and edited the short). We also touch upon Noah Baumbach’s White Noise and the upcoming Leibniz, directed by Edgar Reitz and Anatol Schuster.

Alex (Joseph Longo) with his mother Bettina (Barbara Sukowa) on the beach in We're Not Done Yet
Alex (Joseph Longo) with his mother Bettina (Barbara Sukowa) on the beach in We're Not Done Yet

At the shore a woman in a cosy cardigan dives up into the frame as though she just emerged out of the sea. From a distance a man approaches, who turns out to be her son, Alex, his dyed hair and stumbling gait making him seem like an old man at first. Who is at fault when a confrontation with the neighbours (Lauren Norvelle and Doron JéPaul) gets out of hand over the holding of their baby? What makes jovial local contractor Doug (Danny Mastrogiorgio) such a menace and bitter threat? Really cold chocolate, yoga, a slapstick interlude, and an abandonment on the road expose feelings as old as time, ever shifting, and as personally relevant as ever.

In well-timed waves of emotional turmoil we watch the splendid real-life mother/son duo spend some off-season time at their vacation home when deep-seated jealousies arise and persistent longings come to the surface. Why is his mother cutting out photos of the two of them when he was a little boy? We’re Not Done Yet is a film about serpentine parent and child dynamics.

From New York City, Barbara Sukowa joined me on Zoom for an in-depth conversation on We’re Not Done Yet.

Anne-Katrin Titze: Hi Barbara!

Barbara Sukowa: Long time no see!

AKT: I think the last time was about Two Of Us. I want to start with White Noise, because I loved your performance so much. I loved the character when I read the Don DeLillo book years and years ago and you were great in that role.

BS: Really? That's funny.

AKT: Did you love the part too?

Bettina (Barbara Sukowa) practising yoga
Bettina (Barbara Sukowa) practising yoga

BS: Yeah, well, it was such a weird situation, because I was an awful long time there on set, because they kept repeating the Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig [exchange] and I was basically in the off. The camera was on them; they did many, many takes, and then it was like 4 o'clock in the morning, and then I had one take. It was like, well, I had done it so many times that by the time we shot it, I guess I was exhausted.

AKT: It worked fabulously on the screen. I saw that you'll be in a film with Lars Eidinger again, Leibniz, coming up.

BS: Yes, Leibniz.

AKT: Can you tell me anything about it?

BS: It's a supporting role, because I really wanted to do it, because it's Edgar Reitz's last film. I mean, he's 92. So I suppose it's going to be his last film. And I really wanted to do this just to honour him. He's a great filmmaker. And it was fun.

AKT: He is a legend. That's something I'm very much looking forward to. Wonderful. Now on from a 92 year old director to a very young director, your son! How did this short come about?

BS: Well, he wrote that script and he asked me whether I wanted to play the mother. I had played once again a mother in one of his very first films when he was in film school in California. I also played a small mother role. I think it's easy for him. You know, he has a mother at home. He doesn't have to look for casting, and so he showed me the script, and I really liked it, it was basically finished. There was not a lot that I could say to it. And I said, yeah, I want to play it. When we had the first read-through, just he and I alone, we just had to laugh so much because there are things that we both know. It's not biographical. It's not what our relation is like in the film. But there were these moments.

Alex (Joseph Longo) practising yoga
Alex (Joseph Longo) practising yoga

AKT: I thought there could be. It would be rather extreme if that were your relationship, though.

BS: Yeah, no, no. What I found really interesting is that most films that I've seen with mother/son, it's very often that the mother can't let go of the children. And I thought it was very interesting that in this film the son can't let go of the mother, and I think that is almost maybe a generational thing, because kids have different relations with their parents now than like my generation had with their parents.

So I thought it was an interesting take on this. And I was wondering because it has no big social themes. It's not on LGBTQ or immigration, or anything huge socially, but it is psychological. But in that sense, then also, maybe a social thing that relations with parents and kids have shifted.

AKT: You tell him in the film at one point to go live a little. Just let go! It fits with the title, We’re not done yet, which speaks about both of them. It's a good title. Did you make any changes? Did you say about some things in the script, this goes too far?

BS: No, really not. It was interesting. No, I don't recall. The first time we read it we really had to laugh about it, because, like the way he insistently asks me things, that is something that he does. Sometimes he asked me something very precisely, and that's what we had to laugh about. He had talked with his co-director [Sofia Camargo], she had a lot of input. And I think they also probably discussed it - no, they actually didn’t! Because I know his other films, they had a lot of workshopping in school, but in this one I think he didn't. It was pretty much what it was.

AKT: Is very cold chocolate the family’s stress relief?

BS: Mine! Chocolate, because I make chocolate myself, and it has to go into the fridge. So that's why I like especially cold chocolate.

Barbara Sukowa in Filippo Meneghetti’s Two Of Us
Barbara Sukowa in Filippo Meneghetti’s Two Of Us

AKT: And you do, yoga? Obviously so.

BS: No, I don't. I used to more, not anymore.

AKT: There's a theme that goes beyond the personal family relationship. The wanting of a child, the whole adoption trope made me wonder. Did you read Joseph German fairy tales when he was growing up? Because there's many folktales in which either an older couple or an older person has this wish for a child. And there’s the stealing of a baby, and there’s Rumpelstiltskin!

BS: Right! You know what, I might have, but I don't know whether he remembers. I mean definitely, I read a lot of German fairy tales to my older son, then to my middle, but he was never that good in German at that age so that I probably wouldn't. I don't recall. But he knows how much I love babies. I really am like that when I walk by somebody with a pram. I always have to stop and look inside. I'm just like a real baby fan.

AKT: There's a wonderful list in the film of what you feel you’re not allowed: Don't smoke! Don't eat chocolate! Don't steal babies! I liked very much how the film doesn't go in expected territories. I laughed when you're standing by the field after you threw your son out of the car. And you say, oh, we were looking at the beautiful landscape.

BS: Yeah.

AKT: Did you ever see Bruno Dumont’s France with Léa Seydoux?

BS: No, I didn't.

AKT: There's a moment where she is standing in front of a field, a totally nothing field that's like the one in yours. And she says something about this beautiful view. I had a conversation with Bruno Dumont about that moment.

Barbara Sukowa in Noah Baumbach’s White Noise
Barbara Sukowa in Noah Baumbach’s White Noise

BS: Really? No, I didn't see this one. Maybe Joseph saw it. I have to ask him.

AKT: When I spoke with Dumont, it was about this being cinema. You have a field that is totally ugly, and nothing to see. But then you put a frame around it, and it turns into cinema, and it turns into storytelling.

BS: I like the moment actually, when Doug [Danny Mastrogiorgio] the guy comes and is so cheerful, and says, how are you? He’s like the last person they want to see.

AKT: Yes, he says “I know the two of you”, or something like that. He's great casting, too.

BS: He's very good. Yeah, I love him. He was fun to work with.

AKT: And this is every child's worst nightmare. Your mother and a Doug are sitting on the couch. It's so cringeworthy.

BS: He [Joseph] has not experienced it in life, but I think he imagined it maybe, yeah.

AKT: Everybody can identify with that. The house where you were filming is…

BS: Our house. Everything had to be cheap. So there was no money for a lot of sets.

AKT: You were shooting in the Hamptons somewhere?

BS: Oh, that's on the North Fork.

AKT: The first shot, I think, is your movement coming up as if you're emerging out of the sea!

BS: Well, I think something he cut out. Because for a short film you have a certain time, and I think there was more on the topic that probably you don't get so much. She always wanted to go into the water, and he says, it's too cold, like he always tries to be the parent, basically. And so that was a little longer. I think they cut that out, which is good. Sometimes it's really good if you cut things.

We’re Not Done Yet co-directors Sofia Camargo and Joseph Longo
We’re Not Done Yet co-directors Sofia Camargo and Joseph Longo

AKT: How did you see the adoption theme? It's very interestingly woven in. I've never seen it that way before.

BS: I don't know how he came up with that. I guess just seeing an older person who just wants to have something, a woman full of energy, who just wants to do something. And she says, a cat makes me look like an old lady, and I don't want to do a dog, and maybe his idea came because Joseph knows how much I love babies. Maybe also on the part of the child, the fear to get a younger, another sibling. Maybe competition or fear to lose the hold on the mother. We haven't really talked that much about these things. We've talked about the scenes and then acted them.

AKT: Tell me about the scene on the terrace with the neighbor and the baby! The dynamics between the people are interesting.

BS: We knew that was the location, and it's intercut with him seeing the adoption stuff. It was, of course, shot as one scene. These politically incorrect questions, it was more of that. And now it's more intercut with the adoption, so it has become a little different in the feeling than it was shooting it.

AKT: You don't know at all as an audience member where this is going, how much it's going to escalate and what's going to happen next.

BS: You don't really also know, is it true what she's saying? Is it not true? Maybe she's always lying a little bit? Maybe not. She sees it that way. He tries to get to the truth. A fun thing to act.

AKT: I can imagine. It's a terrific scene. Can you tell me a little bit about your clothing?

BS: It was just my jacket and this kind of flowy, wide thing was the costume designer [Stine Dahlman] she bought that. Of course everything was low budget. But that was all sort of her idea, and I agreed with it. It was very nice to work with this group, because they all knew each other. They all were in film school together, and it was Joseph and his co-director. She’s a really good friend of his.

AKT: Which film school was that?

BS: At Tisch, NYU. He has helped her with films, and she helped him because he was acting also. He needed somebody to be at the monitor, and so it was just lovely working with all these kids. They were so great, and they were so well prepared. It was not like chaos, a chaotic student film. I lived with the girls in the house and we had rented the house of the neighbors for a couple of days. So everybody was there. It was just like a very relaxed and lovely way to work.

Barbara Sukowa with Edgar Selge in Edgar Reitz and Anatol Schuster’s Leibniz
Barbara Sukowa with Edgar Selge in Edgar Reitz and Anatol Schuster’s Leibniz

And I didn't know that my son could act that well! I mean, I wasn't sure. He actually had said: Mom, I'm not really sure if I should do this, you know, act and direct. I'm going to try. But if it doesn't work I have somebody else as backup. And then he acted, and I thought he was great. And I thought, it's lovely. Yeah, it worked out fine. It was a very, very harmonious shoot.

AKT: You can see that it flows nicely. The shots of his room make him seem like a little boy. It's a mess, as though it still were the mother’s job cleaning it up. Again, more longing for the past than she is.

BS: Yeah. She wants to go out and say, okay, my life now.

AKT: He's clinging to childhood with his jealousy.

BS: We had some more lines that we crossed out, like his blonde hair. It's like an attempt of his to do something.

AKT: To do something in which way?

BS: He tries to do something with his life, maybe to be a little more adventurous. So he gives himself that haircut and that hair color. I think we had a line, that's not enough or something. But we cut that out.

AKT: You're the one who switches to German, and it seems that you try to bait him to talk back to you in German, and he doesn't at all.

BS: Okay, yeah. I think it is more that when she gets aggravated then she speaks German. Or when she's with the guy, the contractor there, and she wants him not to hear something, she talks German. But I think the moment she gets aggravated she just falls into German, which I do. Maybe you do that too?

AKT: I don't know. It's in the strangest moments when I suddenly switch. I really don't know if it's aggravation. Maybe. Thank you for this! Good to talk to you. I have Joseph coming up.

BS: Yes, Joseph and Sofia, also a lovely girl. You're going to like them!

Read what Joseph Longo and Sofia Camargo had to say on We’re Not Done Yet with Ed Bahlman.

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