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"Maren Ade's trenchant, funny and sensitive Everyone Else cuts deeper than an Oscar season's worth of emotional turmoil." – The Village Voice
Young couple Gitti (Birgit Minichmayr) and Chris (Lars Eidinger) are on holiday in Sardinia. Gitti works in public relations and is loud, theatrical and devoted; Chris is an architect, talented but lacking confidence, and uneasy with commitment. They love each other but cracks are beginning to form. It isn't until they spend time with Hans and his wife Sana, an excessively affectionate pair, that Gitti and Chris become painfully aware of their relationship's strains.
As in life, the body language, flippant remarks and loaded glances in Everyone Else say so much, with director Maren Ade letting the silences tell the story. Minichmayr and Eidinger's performances are convincingly natural, yet perfectly choreographed, constantly see-sawing audience sympathies between the two characters. Reminiscent of relationship dramas of the 1960s such as Antonioni's L'Avventura (1960) or Godard's Contempt (1963), Everyone Else is an achingly intimate, arrestingly honest study in contrasts, with Bernhard Keller's cinematography warm and sunlit, but framed to highlight the distance and discomfort between Gitti and Chris.
"Not only is Everyone Else an instant contender for the pantheon of breakup movies, its manifold splendours evoke entire periods of great cinema." – Slant Magazine