A mosaic of memories from the 60s and 70s, in which nostalgia and quiet dread exist side-by-side
Scene of the crime: Riehen, a suburb of Basel near the German border. A world of drawn curtains in which no one is divorced and women who drive are a disreputable sensation. This is where Alain Claude Sulzer grows up, one of three sons of a western Swiss woman who barely speaks German (and will never learn it in her lifetime) and a father, whose pride and joy is their formally austere house, which even makes it onto the pages of Switzerland’s most prestigious architecture magazine. Too bad the flat roof is never completely leak-proof and that the rest of the family doesn’t really get much out of the highlight of the interior design: the black-and-white wallpaper and black wall-to-wall carpeting.
In brief memory flashes, Sulzer recounts his youth. Together, his detailed observations – as funny as they are merciless – form a mosaic of memories that packs a punch: There are the ballet lessons, where Alain is one of the few boys and from which he is removed when the rumor arises that the Russian choreographer has his eye on him; or Ms. Zihlmann, who enjoys letting Alain’s father give her a ride into the city – for which his mother tracks her with silent hatred and ultimately successfully drives her away; and, finally, the excursions to the promisingly shady world of the theater and the failed attempt to escape to Paris.
