Philip Gröning

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An examination of life inside the Grande Chartreuse, the head monastery of the reclusive Carthusian Order in France.

In 1984 director Philip Gröning asked the Order of the Carthusians for permission to film them. He was told that it was too soon. Perhaps in ten or fifteen years. Sixteen years later came a call from “Grand Chartreuse” monastery. The time had come.

The preparations for the film lasted two years, shooting alone took one year, and post-production another two years. Twenty-one years elapsed between the first idea and the finished film.Read More »

Synopsis
Robert and Elena are twins entangled in a tale of puberty, philosophy and sexuality.

Gröning’s screenplay centers on a brother and sister, Robert and Elena, 19-year-old twins, who spend one summer’s weekend at a petrol station out in the countryside cramming for Elena’s final exam in Philosophy.Read More »

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The pursuit of truth is a demand that cannot be fulfilled through seeing alone. An encounter with cinema resides through a locale of turbulent openings that allow a mental space for future thought still to be developed. Our very idea of narrative enjoyment is a misnomer, a cul­-de-­sac that needn’t answer anything other than enjoyment. Yet there exists an avenue where the idea of enjoyment is something only to be savoured retrospectively; the experience of this achievement is of the moment – painful, meditative and transcendental. Philip Gröning’s The Police Officer’s Wife (2013) arrives burdened by existing on its own terms, a film experienced but not particularly enjoyed by most at Venice last year.Read More »

L’Amour, L’Argent, L’Amour (2000) was a hit in Germany this year, with the press praising everything from the actors to the director and plot. The titles were initially alluring, red and intercut with time-lapse firework flashes of a city on New Year’s Eve. Helped by a restless camera, the viewer soon realises that it isn’t going to be a “sit down and relax” type of experience.

David, an unemployed scrap metal wimp with his arm in plaster (Florian Stetter) and Marie, an impish, cutsie prostitute, (Sabine Timoteo) meet and spontaneously decide to leave town together. Normally couples elope romantically into the sunset or run adventurously away together, but Philip Groening’s L’Amour, L’Argent, L’Amour (2000) this couple drive off into the snowy, bleak landscape. Copious shots of roads at night ensue (for this is a “road movie”).Read More »