Film Alma Mahler’s biography is not quiteA passionate woman in emotional affairs and musical composition, overshadowed by the success of her husband Gustav Mahler. Alma’s desperate and borderline relationship with expressionist painter and playwright Oskar Kokoschka after being widowed. Actually, the original name of the movie is ‘Alma and Oskar’.
The story takes place in the 1910s. The love between the two artists was stormy and overflowing, one of exuberant relationships filled with equal happiness and pain. Concepts of her free love faced her jealousy. There are times when the characters, especially the fiery Kokoschka, played by an actor who sometimes confuses the terms between passion and sarcasm, are unbearable, but he is himself part of the extreme ‘love fou’ game. images short, 88 minutesbut there is a feeling that perhaps not so unnecessary passages have been removed to better understand the couple’s ups and downs.
Director Dieter Werner portrays the historical context very well: new artistic forms, a break from the rules that both Oskar and Alma represent, outdated traditions of the bourgeoisie of the time and the devastating outbreak of the First World War and its effect mainly on Kokoschka.