More than ten years after Run Lola Run and after having directed major international productions like Perfume (2006) and The International (2009), Tom Tykwer returned to Berlin to make this more modest, but intricate and subtly amusing film about love, death and chance. Hanna and Simon are a couple in their early forties who have been together for twenty years. Simon is an art technician, Hanna moderates cultural programmes. They love each other but they are also bored with each other. Then chance has it that they both meet Adam Born but not together and not quite at the same time. Much to their surprise and unbeknownst to each other they find themselves having an affair with the mysterious stem cell researcher who also doesn’t know they are a couple.
Tykwer stages the entanglements of his very likable, if flawed characters with a light touch and visual playfulness making perfect use of Berlin with her low key metropolitan mix of cultural and trendy sites. But far from being just a zeitgeisty rom com, the film is an intelligent exploration of how relationships change, bounce of each other and take new forms.
Germany 2009-2011, colour, 119mins. German with English subtitles. Director: Tom Tykwer. With Sophie Rois, Sebastian Schipper, Devid Striesow.
You may like to know that Simon is played by Sebastian Schipper, who is now best known as director of the award-winning film
Victoria, which we are showing as a special preview on 30 March 2016 as part of our Goethe-Kino series.
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