Martha And I

A sharply observed small-scale drama given shape and tragic intensity by the Holocaust. MARTHA AND I revolves around the marriage of prosperous Jewish doctor Ernst Fuchs (Michel Piccoli) to Martha (Marianne Sagebrecht), his German maid. The film is told from the point of view of Ernst's adult nephew Emil (Ondrej Vetchy), who was sent as a youngster (Vaclav Chalupa) to live with his uncle on the German/Czechoslovakian border. A memory play haunted by the spectre of history, MARTHA AND I is richly textured and singularly unsentimental, which only makes its calamitous circumstances more deeply affecting.