Afire Review Uselessauthor Comedydrama In Saga Of Angst And Lust
Christian Petzeld has been a titan of German cinema for years (as has the Berlin Film Festival itself), and his new film is a bizarre and conflicted tragedy, perhaps a nod to One Night's Smile. summer of Bergman, who would be wanted. Like in second class. A trilogy on creativity and love (the first is Ondine).
Affair is an approachable and digestible film in a way, and I love the dark, brooding portrayal of artist Thomas Schubert as the hapless young writer Leon, who like his new novel, a comedy of connections inspired by the zeitgeist called Club Sandwich, he rightly suspects it's terrible. But in the end, I felt the movie didn't quite reach the hilarity of the beginning or the sadness of the end.
Leon and his art student friend Felix (Langston Yubel) come to a holiday home owned by Felix's mother on the Baltic coast to relax and work: Léon is revising his manuscript and Felix takes some photos for his portfolio. But their car breaks down on the road and they are exhausted and after arriving on foot they find that Felix's mother has to rent the house and share it with another couple, Naja (Paula Beer) and her annoying lifeguard boyfriend. David (Enno Trebs). . ).
Poor Leon soon falls madly in love with Naja and doesn't want to sleep in the next room listening to athletic sex with David. Additionally, Felix seems to have a crush on an alpha male lifeguard. As Leon's publisher, Helmut (Matthias Brandt), prepares to pay him a visit, promising him some damning notes on his book, a forest fire, altering the night sky, exudes an eerie sense of dread.
In fact, despite the title (the film's original German title actually translates to "Red Skies"), there isn't much flame in this film. There are some laughs in Leon's goofy, no-good attitude, as well as his ability to say the wrong thing to Naja, which he later fights for as a young Hugh Grant in Richard's play. And there are great scenes where everyone is having dinner together or hanging out on the beach.
Helmut's appearance reveals a drastic new change and Naja's past is revealed. Inspired by Heinrich Heine's poem: Der Asra Princess about the fallen slave. But the change in tone isn't very convincing and I wish the film's potential as a light comedy had been developed more. In any case, Schubert's is a fine performance.
