Every Thing Will Be Fine (2015)

Directed by: Wim Wenders
Country: Germany / Canada / others

Movie Review: After the masterpiece documentary “The Salt of the Earth” about the Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado, the extraordinary German director, Wim Wenders, stumbles in his most recent fictional drama, “Every Thing Will Be Fine”. Here, the iconic filmmaker works over a script by the Norwegian Bjorn Olaf Johannessen and entrusts to James Franco, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and Rachel McAdams, the main roles. The story is based on Tomas Elden (Franco), a writer who’s making an effort to maintain in good terms the relationship with his girlfriend, Sara (McAdams). In the middle of that intricate process, he has a traumatic accident, in which a kid dies after recklessly crossing the street in front of his van. Tomas becomes so affected by the incident that he breaks up with Sara and tries to commit suicide. However, after recovering at the hospital, he gradually finds his inner peace, becoming more and more inspired and prolific in his writings. Two years after, he finds his novel critically acclaimed. This fact provokes a sort of exasperation in the victim’s mother, Kate (Gainsbourg), an illustrator who opens the door of her house to Tomas, in an ultimate attempt to ease her pain. Also, her eldest son, Christopher, who was with his brother when the accident occurred, can’t really live in peace with the consuming trauma. The story spans for more than a decade, and even starts with some significance, but falls in a troublesome passivity of processes along the way. The genius of Mr. Wenders, who plays safe this time, completely fades away in a shabby drama characterized by a dismayed atmosphere, monotonous pace, and lifeless interactions among the characters, which transport us to repeated rueful psychological scenarios and pushes us into long-awaited resolutions. By the end, it seemed that the drama would evolve to a sort of thriller, but instead, the painful torpor takes care of the remaining time. The film didn’t touch me, not even once, while the performances of Mr. Franco and Ms. Gainsbourg didn’t impress me either.