nothing in it

Nothing in it is a short documentary showing two women at work. One woman goes about her daily tasks as an Alpine herdswoman, just as she has done for decades. The other woman is a filmmaker who intends to shoot a portrait of the herdswoman.
Various interests meet. At first, the filmmaker is tolerated and is busy with the stage directions: the herdswoman prays twice a day—she can shoot that without a problem—and also the sunlight that falls into the living room—that provides a good motif. However, the protagonist begins to remove herself more and more from the “tiresome” conversation (and from the picture). Answers, especially to personal questions, are as brief as possible. Almost as if coming from off camera, the sentence is heard from which the title is taken; the camera is empty—there’s “nothing in it.”
Talking doesn’t really go anywhere here. The film thus casually and humorously touches upon the problem area of various forms of communication and manners or economies of time for the grandparent and grandchild generations.
What remains for the filmmaker to show in steady sequences of shots is the work, in steps: milking, mowing, or making butter, the little climbs and descents around the Alpine hut on steeply sloping terrain that the 85 year-old woman deals with everyday; having a snack, reading the paper, or listening to the radio in the short pauses in between. The supposedly idyllic, postcard scene of the first shots, the introductory images of the summer-time pasture as a vague, not specifically identified site, are just as demystified as the supposedly self-evident fact of the documentary act. (Isabella Reicher)