According to the Office for National Statistics, almost 30% of people in this country have suffered domestic abuse at some point in their adult life; yet only one in fifteen reports violence in the home. Philip Gröning’s film, his first since acclaimed 2005 monastic documentary INTO GREAT SILENCE, is a fictionalised view of domestic abuse within a German family which attempts to show both the horrors of such physical torment but also to contextualise it within the normality of daily life.
The story of a young family, consisting of husband Uwe (David Zimmerschnied), wife Christine (Alexandra Finder) and their infant daughter Clara (played alternately by twins Pia and Chiara Kleemann), THE POLICE OFFICER’S WIFE is broken up into fifty-eight separate chapters, each chapter both introduced and concluded by a separate intertitle indicating the beginning or end of the chapter and its number. There are various threads and cycles of repetition which run through the chapters: some detail the simple pleasures of family life, such as Christine and Clara making a garden under upturned paving slabs in the side passage of their anonymous-looking house; some show Uwe at work, dealing with the aftermath of a accident or making simple enquiries; but in some, we are shown either the physical abuse taking place or we witness the consequences of that abuse, either through bruises glimpsed on Christine’s body or the subtle changes in her demeanour in the presence of her husband.
The structure of the film is deliberate, almost painfully so, but where it does succeed is in creating a cycle of repetition and a general atmosphere of mundanity against which Uwe’s increasing and arbitrary sadism becomes that much more shocking. Some chapters are little more than a few seconds and focus on local wildlife or the urban fox which Clara has been feeding, while others, especially those concerned with the acts or threats of violence, and the cumulative effect is to create uncertainty in the viewer as to whether or not the next chapter will witness another outburst from Uwe. He’s detached from his family, finding it difficult to form a bond with his daughter and only showing occasional romantic interest in his wife, but equally disconnected from his work; however, other than his varying moods, the film offers no explanations or insight into his violence, situations often escalating quickly and without warning. We never see Christine anywhere except interacting with her family, mainly in her devotion to her daughter, suggesting that even as the outward effects of her suffering become more visible, the opportunities for any outside assistance for her plight remain severely limited.
the first hour becomes an endurance test for the viewer before the true purpose of each thread becomes transparent…
While those segments featuring the family in their various combinations are the most successful, Gröning brings several other elements into his story cycle, with varying levels of success. We see an old man, sitting alone at a dinner table or standing in the snow, whose presence is never fully explained. We also see the family, either individually or together, singing unaccompanied short nursery rhyme or fairytale songs while looking directly into camera. The meaning of the former seemingly becomes clearer as the film progresses and the singing segments do increase the tension further (while we know this chapter will be a non-violent one, the words of each song take on a sinister nature), but the addition of these chapters helps to push the running time of the film to almost three hours. While the themes have become strong enough to resonate by the latter chapters, the haphazard nature of the first hour becomes an endurance test for the viewer before the true purpose of each thread becomes transparent.
The performances are of a high quality, especially that of Alexandra Finder as her world slowly unravels and the incidents of violence become both more frequent and more punishing. It’s her gradual disintegration that makes THE POLICE OFFICER’S WIFE gently heartbreaking, as she contemplates the possible consequences of the violence in her home on her daughter. However, the combination of so many story threads, when they are also dispersed frustratingly across the chasms of the twenty second title card gaps, is distancing and reduces the effectiveness of the more extreme chapters. The film could have been more effective had it dispensed with either the more tangential narrative threads to provide more focus to the domestic situation, or removed the intertitles and allowed the non-sequiturs of the old man or the singing elements to create a more consistent mood. THE POLICE OFFICER’S WIFE still wields an enormous amount of power, but it presents a challenge for the viewer in almost every aspect.
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