Verführung am Meer

This is a beautiful little film. A young, beautiful woman (Elke Sommer) is hired by an older woman. The viewer is not told right away what Elke is hired to do. But we do know she is given a substantial sum. Elke travels to a remote area surrounded by little islands. She rents a boat and goes swimming on a remote island. There, someone tries to drive her off, but she comes back. Eventually a man (Peter Van Eyck) shows himself and a playful friendship ensues. I am not going to go deeper into the plot because I found it quite pleasant to let the story unfurl.

Most of the movie is shot on a beautiful island. The camera spends much time on Elke in her prime. It gazes upon her like a man would look at a beautiful woman if he thought no one was looking. Van Eyck is a distant man, he's had some disappoint in life and it hiding away. That said, he is totally independent, living off grid as they say today. He catches his food, prepares his meals. An underlying story is, does Van Eyck want to disrupt he idyllic, quiet life for what seems like an impossible romance. Van Eyck is roughly 50 years old and Sommer approximately 25. She pushes forward rather playfully, he is reserved, at first. But Elke in her prime can knock down a few barriers.

Not only is the film visually impressive, the story line totally works for me. The dialogue is very stylized, as to say, most people don't speak they way they do in this film. But as a complete package it works. The film is poetic and beautiful. I recommend it, but I do see where some people would not like it.

If one takes the plot only, this movie could have been very kitschy. But this was absolutely prevented by the director, and by the camera-work.

At first there are some moody shots of Berlin in the snow.

Then, at the Dalmatian coast, there's a dark and stormy feeling about the black-and-white-images,with dark broken clouds, sometimes a high wind, and big waves beating the rocks of the small island, on which van Eyck lives all for himself, with his two dogs and one goat.

Set against these rather dark, lonely and stormy images are the personality and looks of Elke Sommer, sexy and attractively self-conscious, using these attributes to lift van Eyck out if his seemingly moody states of mind. At first she does this only because she's paid for it...

There's one scene where van Eyck and Elke Sommer talk directly to the camera, to the viewer, as they sometimes did in films of the French 'nouvelle vogue', at the same time period.

The director Jovan Zivanovic made many films in former Yugoslavia(he died in 2002 in Belgrad), and elsewhere one viewer commented on one of his social dramas from Yugoslavian times, remarking that Zivanovic never got the critical attention he would have been entitled to.