DVD Zum Geburtstag

Writer-director Denis Dercourt's first German language film starts with a flashback, in which we see how one teenager, Paul, tricks another teenager, Georg, in giving him his girlfriend Anna under the premise that he can have her back when he wants to. 30 years later Paul and Anna are married and have two children, Emelie and Lukas. This is when Georg, still married to the girl Paul picked for him, returns to town as Paul's new boss. While Georg's influence on the couple grows increasingly, professionally and emotionally, more and more cracks in their marriage become visible, triggered by a compromising photo of Paul and his assistant. But is it really Anna Georg wants?

All in all I enjoyed this 90 minute film. Sylvester Groth delivers a truly diabolic performance as the boss from hell. That scene where he's standing up there looking down the stairs is only one of a couple truly scary moments. Sophie Rois, as his oddly-behaving wife, is equally good, although she has considerably less screen time. Saskia Rosendahl leaves a lasting impact in her scenes and it's easy to see why she is considered one of the biggest prospects since the release of "Lore". There was one thing really wrong with this film though: the ending. In the last ten minutes, all the quiet tension and mystery from the previous 70 minutes gets thrown overboard and sacrificed for a ridiculously spectacular final twist. I didn't like it at all and it didn't feel particularly believable either. I wish the ending credits would have rolled in the very moment Georg and Emelie kissed. This way, the film would have run only for around 75 minutes, but it still would have been considerably better. Or Dercourt should have found a way to end it in the tone set until then instead of going for such showy closure.

Nonetheless, thanks to everything before, especially the interesting ways in which the characters and their communications were established, it's still a pretty good overall result, just not a great one and I'd recommend the movie.