Adapting (to) Non-Motherhood: Ulrike Kofler’s Film What We Wanted (2020)
摘要
Austria’s entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 2020 Academy Awards was a drama by director Ulrike Kofler called Was Wir Wollten (What We Wanted, 2020). Kofler’s film tells the story of a childless couple, Alice and Niklas, who decided to take a holiday to recover from yet another failed attempt to conceive via IVF. However, their plans for a restful break are disrupted by the family next door, whose beautiful children serve as a constant reminder of what is lacking in their life. The film is based on a short story by Swiss writer Peter Stamm, and this chapter focuses on how that written text was adapted for the big screen. In particular, it considers how Alice’s ambivalent stance towards motherhood, which is already present in Stamm’s narrative, is expressed in visual and cinematic form in Kofler’s film. This chapter argues that both the film and its narrative source text offer a more nuanced view of the story of childlessness and non-motherhood than that which is often presented in the media and society.