Vier Minus Drei (Four Minus Three)

Barbara (Valerie Pachner) works for the Red Noses, donning the eponymous regalia to visit hospitals, while her husband Heli (Robert Stadlober) views their shared profession of clowning as an art form. They have two young children and everyone in their Styrian village knows the family’s whimsical yellow minibus, decked out with circus flair. When just such a vehicle is involved in a fatal accident, Barbara’s heaven on earth comes crashing down.

Based on Austrian author Barbara Pachl-Eberhart’s memoir of the same name, Four Minus Three is equal parts heartbreaking, an earnest celebration of life in all its colours, and an ode to joy. Director Adrian Goiginger explores the expectations placed on those experiencing grief and its expression, rejecting ill-fitting ideas of etiquette and linearity in favour of unapologetic authenticity. Instead of a sombre funeral in line with Catholic tradition, there is an instance in which he literally sends in the clowns: song and dance to honour the deceased’s spirit in a reflection of how he lived his life.

There is a continuous feeling of rawness to the film – even throughout its surprisingly uplifting outlook on one of the most devastating hardships a person could face. In the intertwining of Barbara’s past and present, we are granted access to intimate fragments, a commemoration of memory itself. Largely propelled by the dialogue’s informal language and the actors’ dialects (Stadlober’s Styrian accent is absolutely marvellous!), the scenes feel like genuine slices of life. Pachner navigates a turbulent spectrum of emotions, completely tethered to a fierce desire to experience all of it.

Like the book it is adapted from, Four Minus Three will resonate with anyone who ever experienced loss and may even help make coping a little easier. In embracing grief and memory without restraint, it becomes not just a story about tragedy, but a luminous reminder that love endures far beyond absence.

Selina Sondermann

Vier Minus Drei (Four Minus Three) does not have a release date yet.

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