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Reflections on relationships A scene from "42 Plus"

On her 42nd birthday, Christine dismisses self-satisfied Martin and tries to renew her youth in a torrid encounter with a handsome young beach tramp. Later she confronts the men with the boy who “makes every millimeter of my skin explode”. Many emotional scenes later we find husband Georg in another car following his wife back in hometown. No reconciliation. But the film indicates that both must confront hidden truths about themselves and each other to start on a new journey together.

The story was not new – but the treatment was. The editing gave a sense of pace, and space indoors and out, without the kind of close ups that underline every emotion. The unpretentious camera allowed the viewer to think.

Derflinger’s refusal to pass judgements is not shying away from moral stance. It emerges in the director’s amused sympathy for the mixed up bunch, in her woman’s take on the interactions between the women in the story. Unsparingly she shows how men see women, and laughs at the tragic-comic irony of relationships. “We spend more time in trying to find happiness than investing our time in it.”

Derflinger found herself an assistant director at 18, in a feature made in her town. It led her to a film school in Vienna, to scripting and making documentaries and features. “In films you decide everything, in documentaries you have to follow what’s happening, trust what you get and not force things. Both open my mind and influence each other.”

Derflinger has made four woman-centric features. “May be the same woman!” she laughs. The first showed the clash of local and tourist cultures in a skiing resort through the experience of a waitress. The second finds a woman in West Germany refusing to accept her East German roots until she bonds with her sister there.

“But ‘42 Plus’ started something, I had women calling, mailing, sharing similar feelings.” Even the crew talked about things not usually talked about, wondering whether to opt for a stable but boring relationship, or take risks to fulfil desires“If you think you can change things, finding the strength to effect that change is a struggle. Accepting things you can’t change is a major problem in the western world. I see India is different.”

She believes that despite economic empowerment western women are pressured to look young and good. “Older men have always tried to rejuvenate themselves with young women. Now it is the women’s turn to find young men to recapture lost youth.”

Her documentary “Streets of Delhi” (2006) brought Derflinger to India to study “Butterflies”, a street children’s bank project. “The boys help each other. They’re upbeat, ambitious, want so much. Very different from the druggies, alcoholics and wastrels on the streets of Vienna, who have no will to work, or to live. They’ve given up. I’m not a romantic. I hate poverty. But when I went back to India, I saw the progress the children had made.”

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