User Reviews

"Für immer im Herzen", whcih means "Forever in the heart" is a German television movie from 2004, so it has its 15th anniversary this year and like almostg all German television movies it runs for 1.5 hours approximately. The director is Miguel Alexandre, who has been in charge of many small screen projects here in Germany back then and also now, even if he has moved on to the big screen as well with his Josef Hader movie not too long ago. That was pretty decent, probably also thanks to the cast, but most of his television films do not really seem high quality. This one here is no exception. Honestly, looking at how lead actress Natalia Wörner has been in many really bad films, I was expecting the worst. Luckily, the film was not a complete failure though, even if there are many weak moments. The biggest one is more of a general statement than a specific observation: Wörner is not lead actress material. Never has been. Never will be. Unless maybe in Heiko Maas' life, but that is not a surprise really because in his profession, he is an even bigger failure than she is in hers. At least she is mildly attractive, back then when she was in her mid-30s probably still more than now. But back to this movie now: It is the story of a woman, successful businesswoman, who has to change her life plan when her little nephew is diagnosed with cancer and the boy's mother suffers a mental breakdown paired with depression and suicidal tendencies, so she cannot take care of him. This is when Wörner's character steps in regularly visiting the boy at the hospital and so on. Here and there is a moment of decent heart in this movie, but it just isn't frequent enough in my opinion, not even for this running time. Which hurts even more is that this film lacks considerable attention to detail. Some scenes, dialogues... feel so fake it is tough to stomach. The best example is the early meltdown by Jäger's character at the clinic. And please don't give me that "she is allowing her feelings now" explanation. The way the coversation is developing is just downright ridiculous. Another such moment would be when Wörner's character near the end holds her speech directed at her bosses about how she is no longer fully available anymore for her job. In the sense of 24/7. Linked to that, we also have these cringeworthy moments when we see the main character talk English on the phone to make it obvious to us how greatly her career is going these days. Or the Harry Potter reference that felt clearly written and recited. The actor who plays the sick boy just wasn't good. Or almost everything linked to her partner. At least luckily they did not take the route where she leaves him eventually and gets together with the doctor treating her son. Then maybe I would have reduced my rating even further. I was honestly also surprised by the ending. Yes, it is a bit pseudo-dramatic for sure, but also a bit daring because honestly I expected a fluffy pink happy ending with everybody happy, everybody healthy etc. just like it would be in a Rosamunde Pilcher movie, which this also totally could be judging from how it is titles. Still, despite some rare good moments and decisions (the letter in the end that justifies the title), the one key aspect here, namely the idea of character development for the central character is not a success. Wörner does not have the talent to pull it off convincingly for a film that takes itself 100% seriously. The writing with regard to that is in general not convincing at all either. Familiar faces like Jäger, Zischler, Jaenicke and maybe also Kelling cannot really make a difference either because some of them do not have the talent, but really all of them are clearly limited by the way their characters were written. It's never about anybody else but Wörner at the film's core. So I give this movie a thumbs-down all in all. Watch something else instead.