Review: ‘Everytime’ studies how one family mourns in the smartphone age

Around the midpoint of “Everytime,” the character Lux goes for a dawn swim in a Berlin river. It’s been months, maybe even a year, since his girlfriend Jessie was killed in an accidental fall from a rooftop after she and Lux were up all night doing drugs.

Lux (Tristán López) is wracked with remorse. But youth moves on, and this cleansing swim is part of his healing process. Cinematographer Gregory Oke makes full use of the daybreak light to bathe the scene in shades of gray, the land, trees and water blending into one palette nearly indistinguishable from each other. It’s a long shot, probably from a bridge, and when Lux gets to the center of the river he sinks below the water with only his head visible. The camera remains on him for 30 seconds or so, letting us sit with Lux not just in his grief but perhaps in testament to the infinitesimally short and relatively insignificant span of a human life.

It’s a scene that stays with you in this film about grief and remorse, written and directed by Sandra Wollner. Sad, yes, but Wollner’s exploration of the small family at the center of the story is also magical, particularly toward the end. It also stands in sharp contrast to the small-screen element of the film: Everyone is clutching a phone throughout the action, whether looking back, playing world-building games or simply communicating.

The mother, Ella, is played with devastating realism by Birgit Minichmayr. After the accident, which is only fleetingly portrayed, we skip ahead to Ella and her young daughter Milla (Lotte Shirin Keiling) laying flowers and toys on Jessie’s grave. Already, it seems, Jessie’s death has been reduced to a new chore they must perform weekly, and they go about the grave-tending business as if they were hanging the laundry.

Call it German practicality or simply getting a job done, it also masks the grief and disbelief roiling beneath the surface. And that’s what Wollner is exploring in “Everytime.” Plenty of tears and talk will come later.

Tenerife

One key to understanding the end of the film is buried in an earlier scene where Milla is looking at videos of her sister as a child. One of them shows Jessie on a family trip to the Spanish island of Tenerife, simply playing with a toy in an anonymous hallway. The family had been planning a return trip there when Jessie died, and later, as they’re stewing in grief and suffocating among friends and family, Ella makes a spontaneous decision to resurrect the trip.

On Tenerife, the trio does typical tourist stuff: swimming along the chaotic Atlantic breakwater, taking a hike and walking along the beach. Tenerife has sand beaches, but the family’s hotel is in a very rocky area, with no comfort to be found. Then we return to that same hallway when Milla, getting a soda from a vending machine, sees a little girl playing with a toy.

Is it Jessie? It sure looks like her, and before long both Milla and Ella have adopted the seemingly parentless child as Jessie redux. It’s not clear if this is meant to be real or imagined, although Lux certainly wants to know what the hell is going on.

Up to this point, Keiling plays a child obsessed with Jessie’s phone, which she comes into possession of. It’s an obvious stand-in for her dead sister, but when Ella accidentally on purpose drops and breaks it, Milla opens up to something more tangible. That’s the new child, the resurrected Jessie, and Keiling shines as she convinces her mother to embrace the return.

“Everytime” takes its time working through scenes, with extended shots on faces, scenery, sea and sky to immerse us in this world of sorrow and, ultimately, hope. It’s not one for people who need a happy ending, but as a study in how one family processes grief in today’s world, it’s a startlingly effective piece of filmmaking.