I want to show you my Berlin. A male mime befriends an Israeli singer on the trail of her Jewish ancestor’s home. A broken hearted man is saved from suicide by a talking car. A mother rediscovers her humanity through her daughter’s work with refugees. A woman hits on a man in a bar who might be her long lost father. A young model runs into a laundromat from a rough encounter with a photographer to find herself in a hotbed of feminists. A teenage boy celebrating his birthday approaches a trans man for his first kiss. A Hollywood producer who’s lost his mojo finds beauty in a puppeteer’s characters. A Turkish woman drives a taxi and helps a political dissident … Nothing’s typical Berlin. Part of Emmanuel Bernbihy’s Cities of Love series (Paris, je t’aime, et al) this is a collection of ten interlinked stories reflecting its setting and its possibilities. Local, urban, international, witty, political, filled with dancers, puppeteers, models, actors, children, refugees, romance, sex, singers, cars, espionage, hotels and humanity, this is a well managed anthology which sustains its pace and shifting tone by integrating and overlapping characters, themes and visuals with admirable consistency. There are well judged sequences of politics and fantasy, a jokey reference to the Berlin Wall, a thoughtful acknowledging of the Holocaust, an homage to Wings of Desire, and a hilarious #MeToo sequence in a laundromat. This was the subject of the first ever city film (Berlin, Symphony of a Great City, 1927) and the trials and tribulations and changes it has endured and survived are acknowledged in many ways, from the foreign population to the briefly significant visual tropes without ever dwelling in the realm of nostalgia or physical division (there be dragons). It’s a defiantly modern take on the lifting of the spirit and navigates new aspects of living and sexuality and different kinds of contemporary problems ending on a (sung) note of hope. Delightful, surprising, dangerous, unexpected and varied, light and dark, rather like the city itself. Quite the triumph. Starring Keira Knightley, Jim Sturges, Helen Mirren, Luke Wilson, Mickey Rourke, Diego Luna. Written by Fernando Eimbcke, Justin Franklin, Dennis Gansel, Dani Levy, Massy Tadjedin, Gabriela Tscherniak. Directed by Dianna Agron, Peter Chelsom, Fernando Eimbcke, Justin Franklin, Dennis Gansel, Dani Levy, Daniel Lwowski, Josef Rusnak, Til Schweiger, Massy Tadjedin, Gabriela Tscherniak whose work is united by the beautiful cinematography of Kolja Brandt, production design by Albrect Konra and editing by Peter R. Adam and Christoph Strothjohann. This is Berlin. This is reality, right now
mondomovies 