BEFORE: OK, so yesterday's film was not REALLY called "Boston, I Love You", I was making a joke, because I knew this one was coming up. The overarching name for this franchise is "Cities of Love", they started with Paris back in 2006 and covered New York in 2008, then "Rio, I Love You" was released in 2014, and I watched that one just last year. But I think that's when I also found out there was one set in Berlin, which I somehow missed - and I'm of mostly German descent, so these are my people. Plus, after tonight, I'm all caught up, at least until they release "Los Angeles, I Love You" - or perhaps Shanghai will be next, it's a bit unclear. Perhaps the pandemic really scuttled the plan for the next installment, which was due in 2019, and is listed by IMDB as "still in development".
But wait, there apparently was another installment in 2014 that nobody ever watched, because it was called "Tbilisi, I Love You" - Tbilisi is the capital of Georgia (the one in Asia) and most Americans have never even heard of that city. Hell, most Americans don't even know there's another Georgia, in addition to the U.S. Southern state whose capital is Atlanta. Most Americans probably don't even know the capital of either Georgia - sorry, but you know this is true. Do I want to track down "Tbilisi, I Love You" next February? No, I do not. I'll wait for the one set in L.A., at least then I'll have some point of reference.
Veronica Ferres carries over from "Love, Weddings & Other Disasters".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Rio, I Love You" (Movie #3,759) (Watched EXACTLY one year ago!)
THE PLOT: This collective feature film is made of ten stories of romance set in the German capital.
AFTER: I've been to Germany, back on a high-school exchange - but not to Berlin. When I was there, it was still a divided country, the Wall was still up, and the capital of West Germany was Bonn, where I spent most of my time. I was taken on a drive through Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg, just so I could get my passport stamped and say I was in a couple other countries. I remember visiting Aachen, and someplace close to the border with East Germany, but the rest is quite foggy - I did meet a few of my grandmother's relatives, but I didn't come anywhere close to her hometown. I also overslept and missed a cruise down the Rhine River, so yeah, I've got some regrets. Someday I should really go back as an adult and do a proper tour, see the Rhine and Berlin and my father's father's ancestral homeland, which we now believe is Alsace-Lorraine, a very French part of Germany. (Hell, all of France was once a part of Germany, but shhh, don't mention the war. They don't like to talk about it.)
From what I know of the country, which I admit is very limited, it's not the first choice for a movie whose subject is love. What do the Germans know about love, anyway? Well, they must know something, because they keep making more Germans, so it's got to exist in some form, right? On a whole, they're a very reserved, logical people, some might call them rigid or harsh or set in their ways, but that's all in the past, right? I joke about Hitler and say he was the ultimate German in that he was logical and organized, probably had OCD and he just wanted to re-arrange all of Europe until it was all called Germany and efficiently run. (Damn, I mentioned the war again, and I said I wouldn't do that.). I caught my grandmother once saying that he was well-intentioned, he just took things a bit too far, which is, of course, the ultimate understatement. I know she couldn't have been a Nazi sympathizer, because she left the country before that party ever took control.
(The other night, as I was watching "Their Finest", which showed Londoners hiding out in subway tunnels during the German bombing Blitz, it turns out there were people in Kyiv, Ukraine, doing the exact same thing. I got chills when I learned that, because here we are, all these years later, and history is repeating itself, to some degree. "Berlin, I Love You" opens with images of World War II tanks rolling through Berlin, the famous Wall being built, and people living on both sides of that wall, family members - perhaps even lovers - separated for God knows how long. And how can I not be reminded of what's going down in Ukraine RIGHT NOW as another dictator tries to take land that's independent and incorporate it into his country. Any time somebody tries to redraw the map, whether they're Nazis, Russians or gerrymandering Republicans, they simply must be stopped. I don't have the power to do it, but perhaps we can all work together. OK, enough about the war.)
I love these ensemble films, not just because of their huge casts - OK, it's largely because of their huge casts, because they make what I do possible, films like this have gotten me out of one linking jam after another, so they're great for me to keep handy on my cast list sheet (which, no lie, is a 67 or 68 page document on my computer). If I can get to a film like this, I can go just about anywhere - usually. If I'm going to stay in the romance chain for another two weeks, it turns out this time I've got exactly ONE choice about where to go tomorrow. But look, this film could have linked to "Legally Blonde 2" or "A Rainy Day in New York", so it was going to help me out for sure, no matter where it ended up. The chain remains unbroken, that's ALL that really matters. But there is a side benefit, this year's already shaping up to be perhaps my most multi-cultural year EVER - and last year I started with a Korean film, then spent a few weeks on Swedish films, and that was just JANUARY. And since I couldn't go anywhere in person in 2021, I also virtually went to the U.K. a few times, besides Sweden I watched films set in Australia, Canada, Spain, Brazil, Italy, France, Netherlands, Ireland, Israel, Russia, Argentina, Saudi Arabia and a fair amount of time on tropical islands - Cuba, Puerto Rico, Devil's Island and wherever Fantasy Island, Spooky Island, Paradise Hills and Corto Maltese are. Let's just say I get around.
So far this year I've been (virtually) to France for "The French Dispatch", a whole week in China, Japan for "Memoirs of a Geisha", Spain for "The Cold Light of Day" and Jamaica for "How Stella Got Her Groove Back". Then there was a week in the U.K. starting with "Ammonite" and ending with "Their Finest", and a brief stopover in Italy for "House of Gucci". Now I'm back in Germany, where "A Most Wanted Man" was also set, and again, it's only February.
I'm avoiding talking about the fact that this film really does prove that Germany's not a great place to stage a romance-based film. Some of these ten stories aren't really about romance at all, and I could have sworn that was a pre-requisite for the filmmakers involved. "Tell any story you want, just make sure it's about love." OK, some of them failed, but I guess they contractually had to include the stories anyway, I mean, they were already filmed. But this is how you kill a franchise, possibly, if you go too far off the path and you don't stick to your own rules. The rules used to be that there needed to be 10 short stories about love, with NO overlap - but in this film, you can often see characters from one short walking across the background of another short. I guess maybe Berlin has that "small town" feel, where everybody knows everybody, or crosses paths with each other, even if they don't know it? And then we see almost everybody again during the big crowd scene at the end, as the credits roll.
The ten stories are, in descending order of romance level:
1) "Lucinda in Berlin" - a harried filmmaker falls for a woman who performs puppet shows for children (only they meet cute and sort of skip the part where they, you know, fall in love)
2) "Transitions" - a street musician falls for another street performer, who wears angel wings (or perhaps is an actual angel, this is unclear, but come on, I've seen "Wings of Desire")
3) "Berlin Ride" - a man whose girlfriend left him to marry his brother decides to drink himself to death, but the GPS on his car talks him out of it, and encourages him to find new love with a voice-over actress
4) "Berlin Dance" - a tourist meets a street drummer, then stumbles into an imagined underground dance club where she dances with an orchestra conductor, then meets the street drummer again. Here's where the romance level starts to dip, because it could be this woman just had a weird drug trip.
5) "Drag Queen" - a drag queen breaks up with his boyfriend, then meets a 16-year-old boy in the wee hours of the morning, who's unsure if he wants to kiss boys or girls in the future. Hell, kiss them all, this is Berlin after all
6) "Love Is in the Air" - an aging American rocker picks up a younger woman in a hotel bar, and comes close to sleeping with her. No spoilers here, but this isn't nearly as romantic as it might sound at first.
7) "Me Three" - a number of women congregate in a laundromat at night, and they end up discussing sexual harassment, and one of the more notorious public abusers walks in, just before the big dance party!
8) "Under Your Feet" - a refugee worker takes home a small Arab child, so that he won't be sent away from his mother. The refugee then goes out for a night on the town, while her mother watches the young boy.
9) "Hidden" - an Arab refugee is in trouble for defending his family from punks, and he takes refuge in a brothel. But no sex, please.
10) "Embassy" - a female cab driver talks too much, but her journalist passenger entrusts her with top secret documents, because he thinks he's about to get taken away by the authorities or some shadowy figures.
See, three of the stories don't have anything to do with love or romance at all - though I guess you can say that in #8 and #9, at least there's love for the main character's family members. I'll have to let those slide, but #10 has no right at all being in this movie, it doesn't fit the brief! I guess maybe this all represents Berlin, somehow, assuming that Berlin is a jumbled-up mess. There are refugees, spies, prostitutes, drag queens, club kids, street musicians, filmmakers and puppeteers. OK, I guess but I think I miss the days when they would have set one of the stories at a beer festival, or had two lovers on both sides of the Berlin Wall or something. Again, it's been about 35 years since I visited Germany, so I suppose a lot has changed. Berlin's a vibrant, ever-changing place - I remember when my fellow exchange student from Bonn stayed at my parents' house, my grandmother asked him if they had electricity and refrigerators and everything there, because they didn't when she left.
Any movie like this, unfortunately, is going to fall back on a number of clichés in order to tell stories about a particular place. Maybe it's impossible to summarize everything about a city in just 10 short stories - but then again, maybe you can't even do that with 100 short films. Every person has their own way of looking at a city, and some of those stories are going to be great, and some just aren't. Some stories are going to be full of love and romance, and some stories just aren't. And in the case of "Shanghai, I Love You", if the Chinese government has their way, some of those stories just aren't going to be told at all. One of the proposed stories for "Berlin, I Love You" apparently offended the Chinese censors, so it was cut, and probably replaced by "Embassy" or "Hidden" at the last minute. In addition to fighting dictators, we've got to start fighting back against censorship, too.
I ended up falling asleep during "Hidden" - but that may have had something to do with the fact that I replaced my usual glass of Diet Mountain Dew with a couple of German beers - a Warsteiner Oktoberfest left over from last fall, and an Augustiner Maximator doppelbock. Only 7.5% alcohol, but it tasted like it had a much higher alcohol content, which the name would also suggest. I love the stronger beers, like 10%-11% or higher, but only if they taste good. This one knocked me out, so when I woke up on Saturday morning (OK, afternoon) I had to re-watch the last hour of the film, just to see if I'd missed anything. Really, only about 10 minutes of "Hidden" and I guess I woke up again last night and watched through ALMOST all the way to the end. OK, so that one's done and off the list, and I never have to watch it again. For the reasons stated above, censorship and pandemic and general lack of romance, I'm thinking this might be the end of the franchise. And I have no plans to watch "Tbilisi, I Love You".
Also starring Keira Knightley (last seen in "Official Secrets"), Helen Mirren (last heard in "The One and Only Ivan"), Luke Wilson (last seen in "Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde"), Jim Sturgess (last seen in "The Way Back" (2010)), Mickey Rourke (last seen in "Sin City: A Dame to Kill For"), Jenna Dewan (last seen in "Setup"), Emily Beecham (last seen in "Hail, Caesar!"), Dianna Agron (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), Diego Luna (last seen in "A Rainy Day in New York"), Iwan Rheon, Charlotte Le Bon (last seen in "The Take"), Sibel Kekilli, Nolan Gerard Funk, Julia Dietze, Sylvester Groth (last seen in "The Reader"), Toni Garrn (last seen in "Spider-Man: Far From Home"), Yvonne Maria Schafer, Pheline Roggan, Robert Stadlober, Omar Elba/Alexander Black (last seen in "A Hologram for the King"), Hannelore Eisner, Rafaelle Cohen, Max Raabe, Carol Schuler, Diana Birenyte, Hans Schenker, Monique Lange, Kostas Sommer, Nafsika Pan, Jake Weber (last seen in "Midway" (2019)) and the voices of John F. Kennedy (last seen in "Irresistible"), Ronald Reagan (last seen in "The Sentinel" (2006).
RATING: 4 out of 10 stories about ostriches
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