Every once in a while we get a movie that tries to play with the sentiments and the zeitgeist of a bygone era. An era most relevant to Post-Punk aficionados would probably be the early eighties, and while this new German movie doesn’t seem to take its topic too serious, it sure looks like enjoyable mindless fun. (Plus, you get uber-cool young Nick Cave and Blixa Bargeld-lookalikes, what more can you ask for your hard earned cash?) For more accuracy, there are plenty of documentaries on the topic – English, international and German ones – but films like this seem like a better way to transport what kind of feeling it might have been to be young and in the right place at that moment in time.
The story is set in 1980: “19 year old Robert, fed up with Hippy phoniness and bourgeoise narrow mindedness alike, flees the German provinces for West Berlin. A tour de force through the glorious dirt of West Berlin ensues—Full of sex, drugs, love, and PUNK.” Robert is played by Tom Schilling, who also happened to play a leading role in 2003’s Verschwende Deine Jugend – a movie with a similar setting, portraying the lifestyle at the time of New Wave in West Germany (or Neue Deutsche Welle).
While the project seems to be pretty easygoing, a look at the director’s curriculum vitae offers hope for some more depth inside the story, as Oskar Roheler has delivered some serious works in the past and seems to have a thing for Michel Houellebecq. Let’s hope for the best, and also for a release outside of Germany.
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