In the past, the parents were left feeling forlorn and miserable whenever their son came to visit – and it was much the same for the son. Therefore, they avoided one another whenever possible. For decades the situation had hardly changed. The film traces a reencounter years later between the director and his parents – and is an attempt at a personal revision of the past.

Closely knit yet poles apart: this is the ambivalent standpoint from which Peter Liechti turns his lens on his elderly parents and the story of their marriage. Alongside conversations that shift from slapstick to insanity and observations of daily life in his parents’ cramped, lower middle class apartment, a puppet theatre is also established as a second location. This forms the stage for scenes between mother and father to be reenacted by rabbit puppets; as a puppet, the son can also react in explosive fashion. Wild sound effects and music provide an additional level of commentary, generating disorder, disharmony, and distance.

Drawing on specific biographies, this deeply personal film transcends the private to convey the tenor of life and sense of self of a generation from a bygone era: unsentimental yet full of empathy.