Der Wald vor lauter Bäumen

"The Forest For the Trees" tells the story of Melanie, a young woman who sets off for a job as a teacher in the big city. She is idealistic and thinks (as most new teachers do)that she knows more than the experienced teachers because she has just come from college and she knows "new" techniques, when experience is the ONLY teacher. But I digress...Eva Loebau does a marvelous job portraying Melanie, who can constantly be counted on to say the wrong thing, both in her professional and in her personal life! We watched and cringed as Melanie made faux pas after faux pas, never seeming to learn, and being too proud to ask for help! As to the ending, the director (we saw this at a Sundance screening, and the director came up on stage for Q and A afterward) said that the end was meant to be more symbolic than literal. I didn't really think there would be another credible way to end the story, and thought that the director did an awesome job in this, her first film.