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DVD &Me
 Run time: 88 min Rating: 6.2 Genres: Romance Director: Norbert ter Hall Writers: Norbert ter Hall, Oscar van den Boogaard Stars: Mark Waschke, Verónica Echegui, Teun Luijkx |
| Storyline Every month a strange ritual takes place in Brussels. The European Parliament moves to its Strasbourg seat in 15 enormous trucks. A week later everything is moved back again. The romantic comedy &ME takes place against the backdrop of this desperate attempt to maintain European idealism. &ME tells the story of 24-year old law student Edurne who moves from Sitges to Brussels. On her first day at the European Parliament she collides violently with 40-year old German Eduard Schiller. Unlucky in love, homosexual Eduard has arrived in Brussels from Berlin to start a new life. Looking for happiness, he has decided to take a new path and look for a woman. Edurne and Eduard see the collision as the sign of a special relationship. L’amour c’est bizarre. Everything changes when they meet handsome 30-year old EC removal man Richard. A battle for Richard’s love develops between Eduard and Edurne. The confrontation with the truth gives the threesome very different answers to the same question: how… Written by Phanta Vision |
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| Plot Keywords: shower, gay kiss, anal sex, male nudity, gay interest | |
| Details: Country: Netherlands Release Date: 14 March 2013 (Netherlands) |
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DVD &Me
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The pretentious title containing the too hip ampersand which will no doubt be passé in a few months, leaving an unpronounceable name, directs the movie immediately to the corner of embarrassments, and sadly, it stays there. The book on which the movie is based is called Fremdkörper. A perfectly suitable title so this choice is the first of many that puzzles.
Then we have the story of two people, leaving behind their unfulfilled lives to head to Bruxelles, the capital of the European bureaucracy where nobody stays forever and everybody always is on the move. They fall in love instantly and move in together. The books of Oscar van den Boogaard are packed with people who feel deeply and voice those feelings and therefore his characters are often not very believable. In a film we need to believe the characters, and in this case the director gives us very little reason. Both are unhappy in their respective lives. For the girl, 24 and still living in a hotel with an overbearing mother, leaving is almost a logical step. However, Eduard, the male lead is obviously a very successful law expert with a life full of friends in Berlin that he leaves behind. His sister doesn't understand his depart, and so doesn't the public. There must have been a terrible experience, a lost love, treason, something to make him leave for Bruxelles and fall immediately in love with a woman even though he is gay. (And can get laid anytime because he is a very hot man with a very large and beautiful house.) But neither in the beginning, nor in the course of the film do we get any explanation, and this absence gives his dramatic choices an arbitrary streak and makes his emotional outburst in the bath a parody.
The girl, Edurne, is modeled on the 'crazy funny girl', like an Audrey Hepburn in Funny Girl or Monique van de Ven in Turkish Delight, and she is no doubt cast for her resemblance to Penelope Cruz. However, she has nor the acting abilities, nor the script to make Edurne a round character. Her ridiculous demands for promises to never leave her, don't make her sympathetic just a demanding lunatic.
Some relief comes when Teun Luijkx as Richard joins the menage, and with a few lines he establishes his character as someone who really needs love. But at the same time he makes a puzzling transition in clothes: from a shabby mover/dealer to a sharply dressed hipster.
Happiness doesn't last, but that Wisdom comes at the end of this movie, which is curious because when things do not last, is when the drama comes, and that is here exactly one and a half scene. And again, nothing explained and nothing felt by the audience: they are just making notes. "Ah, relationship over." The last shot is a curious exotic landscape where Richard walks. Is there a message, a pointer or is this poetic justice? One fears that the production got some money from Catalonia, for the scene is superfluous at least.
Then there are some clichés (drunk scene, Maria Callas for dramatic effect, ending in the Atomium) and some errors (Edurnes first day in Bruxelles her apartment is fully furnished with even dirty dishes, Ich Bin Wie Du from Marianne Rosenberg being a Dutch hit for her and not a German one (that's Er Gehört Zu Mir)) and technical problems: lots of long shots out of focus.
What is left is a very immature, puzzled and pretentious film which leaves this viewer quite embarrassed.
I would have loved to give this film more, but it is really at almost every level poor. First the script, I love meandering films about people who try to live their life and cope with it. But this is so utterly uninteresting: it never relates to anything deeply human, it is so very shallow. They talked a lot in the film, but I did not hear one interesting line: no good for a film about human emotions and interactions and no action movie. You did instead hear a lot of: "What do you mean?" or "What's the matter?" or "I love you", "Me too". Poor writing. Then the actors themselves. Quite bad casting or not knowing what to cast (I think the latter). And did the director tell the girl just one thing? To be stupid, naive and giggle all the time? Small part but also bad: her mother. So cliché, more cliché's by the way, for instance the opera with Maria Callas as an illustration for their mood (and not being from the street, the maker wants to tell us obviously). The German guy was OK, you saw him trying to make the best of it, but with such poor material he had no chance. The worst was the Dutch guy. He had to play someone who is gradually really understanding what was happening, to himself and the others, at least that's what I could make up from it, but failed heavily in the scenes he was supposed to act that out. The worst was their lack of chemistry. Not only among themselves they hadn't, but also I had not one moment of love or emotion for the characters, how hard the director tried, letting them cry on screen. They cried, I didn't.
You've got Dutch film, French-, British, German, Portugeuse etc. But what is a European film? To me &ME is a good example. Actors and actresses from different countries, at least two or three different languages and and sometimes don't bother with the subtitles.
&ME has all that, besides a bizarre plot(or no plot), sometimes weird acting and a story (is there one?) you can write on a napkin. But if you sit back and enjoy the movie, don't wonder to much about the friendship you see unfolding, or the bizarre workings of the EU-council you'll have a good time.
It's a small movie about a love story that takes some weird twists. There is some nudity in it, but not something us Main-land-Europeans worry about. And because it's a small movie you'll forgive it it's fault.
I stumbled upon this during a sneak preview and I must unfortunately admit it is probably one of the worst movies I've ever seen. It has a terrible screenplay, most actions and characters in the story are utterly unbelievable. It is so badly edited that the pacing is wrong in almost every scene. Camera-work is amateurish (Dutch cameramen usually ARE reliable in this regard) and the unexperienced director has no clue about making the story work for the screen. Most acting here is so laughable that the audience laughed at scenes that should be heartbreaking. The only acceptable performance comes from Rossy de Palma, known from several Almodóvar movies.
The story is about several European civil servants meeting at the EU-center Brussels and starting and finishing relations. It is somewhat in the realm of Bertolucci's The Dreamers: Young people experimenting with their lives, sexuality and ending back in reality again. At first sight it seems like some sponsored EU propaganda, showing how great it is to meet all kinds of different Europeans. Many scenes are filmed in Brussels and Strassbourg, the EU color blue is prominently used (even the plaster is blue). However as the movie progresses more criticism arises: unnecessary locations to Strasbourg, nobody actually works in the movie (the only work scenes are afternoon drinks). Add to this that you can see the characters not only as standing for themselves but also for their respective nations, the whole pointlessness of European integration comes to light (intended or not?). In the end everybody is alone again, signified by the atom symbolism in the Brussels Atomium.
It seems like an intelligent movie, it even could have been, but it fails so utterly in all movie departments that I can unfortunately only recommend that you avoid this like the plague.