Four Minus Three (Vier minus drei, 2026) ‘Berlinale’ Movie Review: Searching for Laughter Between the Pained Cycles of Grief

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One of cinema’s favourite ironies—one that, in actuality, applies more broadly across narrative history—is the idea that stories about clowns can only ever really exist as some form of bleak tragedy. Perhaps that comes from our increasing understanding that the people who make us laugh most are actually some of the entertainment industry’s most tortured souls, or perhaps it’s the weight of the horrors around us that creates the sombre notion that every attempt to make us smile endures only as long as the helium in a small red balloon. In any event, few images have had quite the depressive power of a painted smile that fails to mask a permanent frown.

“Four Minus Three” takes this notion to heart, to the degree that Adrian Goiginger’s Austro-German drama about a clown couple and their two young children doesn’t even last a full 10 minutes before living up to its title and killing off all but the matriarch of this troupe. But what threatens to be a terminally desolate statement on the ultimate illusion of joy instead grows to become a malleable testament to laughter as one of the only real means of subsistence in the face of soul-splitting grief.

The journey towards this understanding is a slow and debilitating one for Barbara (Valerie Pachner), a career clown who makes her living touring hospital rooms to bring an ounce of solace to the lives of young children confined to the antiseptic walls of a treatment clinic. Her practice comes in contrast with that of her husband, Heli (Robert Stadlober), who takes clowning in a more… seriously inclined direction. For him, pretending that a balloon is an immovable force gives him the space to stimulate imaginations less under the guise of a temporary distraction between grander acts, and more like a one-man show rich in its own aesthetic value.

Four Minus Three (Vier minus drei, 2026) — A still from “Four Minus Three” (*Vier minus drei*, 2026)

In both cases, clowning is a profession this couple takes quite seriously, despite their diverging methods, and this career focus on bringing light to a dark world carries over to the care of their young children, Thimo (Johan Recklie) and Fini (Victoria Wild). But no amount of career preparation to harness happiness could ever prepare Barbara for the moment she receives a phone call from her friend stating that a clown car was involved in a horrific accident. Immediately, Barbara is told that Heli has died, but her children’s states are much more complicated. Resuscitation followed by severe brain damage, or a promising diagnosis that suddenly turns fatal the moment Barbara steps out of the hospital to get some air.

No scene illustrates the debilitating tightrope act thrust upon her more clearly than that very first moment, the children’s doctor (familiar German face Ronald Zehrfeld) is explaining the rollercoaster of encouraging news immediately underscored by one bleak asterisk after another. In this moment, Goiginger chooses to hold on to Pachner’s face as the flood of conflicting tidbits penetrates her psyche too quickly to even process what it all means.

Her crooked smile is given barely a second at a time to register before being slammed with jabs of misery that will soon overtake the situation altogether. Her brain has a vague understanding of where this is all going, but her heart wants to hold on to every shred of hope, and Pachner’s visage glazes over in shock, only to crack and spill into a silent anguish that envelops her in an instant.

From here, “Four Minus Three” will forego a linear examination of grief that seems befitting of a life that opted towards alleviating the tragedies of others with a goofy smile, now unable to to proceed with finding a ray of light in her own personal travesties—the family funeral evolving into an almost Fellini-esque display of carnival theatrics in the midst of solemn processions shows how deeply Barbara wants to honour the lively spirit of her family, and how much Goiginger wants to explore the inherent contradictions of facing grief with a pained grin.

Senad Halilbašić’s screenplay flip-flops back and forth between the present and the past like a clown balancing on a unicycle, matching Barbara’s present stage of suffering with a complementary moment that often directly counters it. And while some of these parallels strike as a bit too structurally cheeky for their own good (the announcement of Fini’s death leads to a flashback of Thimo’s birth), others play with a poetic simplicity that fully sells the cyclical nature of mourning.

Barbara’s gentle firing from her job—apparently, her status as a widow under such grim circumstances would be too depressing for families to ignore, even under the modest makeup of her alter ego Heidi—segues beautifully into her adorable first meeting with Heli as a street performer, and the subsequent discovery of the passion for clowning that would find her that job in the first place.

Goiginger’s subtle changes in lighting help to distinguish the shift in atmosphere between these two timelines—that, and a somewhat contrived injury to Barbara’s forehead clearly intended to leave a scar that would help audiences remember what period they’re watching—and, further, enable the general mood of the film to prop up the stark contrast that exists between moments of levity in modest triumph and sinking tragedy.

Rarely has a film so distinctly illustrated how having an occasional laugh does not in any way constitute a comedy, as Barbara’s instinct to giggle at the erectile dysfunction of a prospective recovery lay becomes a testament to only the most minor of gaieties (themselves stemming from another’s misery) in a sea of crippling discontent.

“Four Minus Three” thus finds itself in no hurry to explore its variety of grief through an expected arc of tribulation and triumph, with several of Halilbašić’s more contrived narrative beats—an open letter of grief that becomes a wider public artefact, or tensions between Barbara and her near-radically religious in-laws—falling completely to the wayside in favour of a primarily internalized depiction of the pangs of insurmountable distress. Some battles are as straightforward as a symbolic victory over a tangible obstacle; most of the time, the only victory comes from the persistence to smile another day.