2005-07-23
N/A
94 min
Armin Steeb is adrift: just finished with school, living with his middle-class parents, clueless about finding work. He tries connecting with a girl, he engages in risky sex with strangers in public toilets, he goes to job interviews. He also sends an anonymous letter to a local Munich newspaper, claiming responsibility for a fatal road accident. He fitfully pursues notoriety as he goes through life nearly without affect. What will it take to get Armin to smile?
"Armin" (Constantin von Jascherhoff) is a teenage lad, the third of three brothers, who is living a rudderless existence at home. His mother dotes on him, his father tries to help him rehearse for job interviews and his elder brother "Stefan" (Florian Panzner) is about to be a father. "Armin" just feels left out. Unfulfilled. He is sort of keen on "Katia" (Nora Waldstätten) but she has eyes for his friend. He's also keen on a leather clad biker whose gang frequent the local public toilet. He even takes him home for some fairly perfunctory sex. He is in a rut and there doesn't look like that is going to change anytime soon. So what can he do? Well, I'm afraid that auteur Christoph Hochhäusler has few ideas to enliven this otherwise rather ploddingly paced and increasingly introspective glimpse at the life of his decent looking, intelligent enough, young man who is just the same as most of us at that age. Self-obsessed, confused and hormonal. The acting is just as perfunctory as the sex, the scenarios repetitively down beat and I just didn't really engage at all with this, sorry.
