Everyone Else

POLITE APPLAUSE Drama. Written and directed by Maren Ade. With Birgit Minichmayr, Lars Eidinger, Hans-Jochen Wagner, Nicole Marischka. In German with English subtitles. (Not rated. 119 minutes. At the Lumiere in San Francisco and the Shattuck Cinemas in Berkeley.)

"Everyone Else," a closely observed drama about relationships, teaches us how the small things of everyday life - gestures, casual remarks, glances, a teasing word - take on significance that's elusive at the moment and sadly clear in retrospect.

Chris (Lars Eidinger), a moody architect, and Gitti (Birgit Minichmayr), a rock music publicist, are vacationing in Sardinia. He is talented, but perhaps too high-minded for his own good. She's outspoken, playful, not especially intellectual. They're in their thirties and, it seems, happily in love.

But small fissures quickly appear in the relationship. She's inclined to press things, he's apt to back away. She wants to be told she is loved. He's entered an important architecture competition and can't or won't tell her the results. Scratch the surface, and there is angst on both sides.

In the earlier part of the film, we see Chris and Gitti mostly in isolation. Later, they venture out into the world. It's not such a radical break, as each setting sheds light from a different perspective. Nothing of great import happens, and their moods are up and down, but writer-director Maren Ade ("The Forest for the Trees") makes ordinary conversations and events whisper uncomfortable truths about the pair.

The story breaks into three parts, separated by two sequences when Chris and Gitti spend time - some of it very uncomfortable - with another couple, an architect (Hans-Jochen Wagner) who's more successful than Chris, and his pregnant fashion-designer wife (Nicole Marischka). There's a good deal going on under the surface at these gatherings, which simply adds to the pressure on Chris and Gitti.

Will their relationship bend or break under the obvious strains? Will there be emotional bloodshed? Or maybe it's better to ask, when will there be emotional bloodshed?

This is a remarkably quiet film, given the subject. Ade is not interested in big-time histrionics or noisy climaxes and declines to spoon-feed us with answers. She gives Chris and Gitti all the space they need, and if a few scenes wear out their welcome, we're inclined to overlook it. That's partly because of the exceptional acting of the two leads.

It's an impressive achievement: The film reveals things about each person's inner world, and how it looks to the other, without making us feel as if we're lost in a house of mirrors.

-- Advisory: Sexual content.