Donau, Duna, Dunaj, Dunav, Dunarea

I saw that film here in Germany at a film festival. It's a pointless mishmash of would-be characterisations, hinted-at back stories, and childish play with symbolisms and metaphors. It succeeds at creating a sort of heavy summer-dream atmosphere - but what use is that without an actual story. Fittingly, the actors act their characters like they are figments of a dream, lifeless and without motivation - doing that they are probably just acting in self-defence, because they, too, apparently couldn't find any point in the script.

As a "dream", the film with its proto-characters and its atmosphere might have been a decent short film, but it's at least 60 minutes too long for that - 60 minutes you could easily have cut from the film without hurting either the atmosphere or the would-be story.

"Donau, Duna, Dunaj, Dunav, Dunarea" - like most German art house films, unfortunately - is pretentious to the n-th degree. It tries to convince the audience that it is high art, but it isn't. It's not even a film.