Paul stays behind. At a highway rest stop on the way back to the barracks, Paul doesn’t get back in the car. He refuses by remaining seated in the restaurant without anyone noticing. Paul would rather do nothing than go back to the Bundeswehr. In his debut film, Ulrich Köhler creates this scene as a fascinating sequence shot beginning the wonderfully aimless search of a young man who has neither the desire to explain himself nor to continue down a certain path. Paul’s refuge is his parents’ bungalow, a symbol of lower middle-class West German affluence. Patrick Orth’s camera feels its way along the body of a dropout whose immanent desire not to have to function or be part of a system is shown not in dialogue, but in images. A ride on a skateboard, a summer, a flirtation with his brother’s girlfriend, an unanswered phone call, the curiosity of what it would be like to slip into a woman’s bathing suit. Ulrich Köhler links together small, intimate observations with a breathtaking calm and precision, without promising the possible coming-of-age a catharsis: It doesn’t need one.
Director: Ulrich Köhler, 2003, Colour, 85 Minutes
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