I love this movie madly. . I saw it four days ago and it still hasn't let go of me. Floyd, Walter and Ricco have only one last night together to come to terms with the fact that Floyd will ship out on a freighter the next morning. They drift into that bleak Hamburg night like they would on any other, and the mundane becomes suddenly extraordinary as the reality of the impending farewell percolates through their celebration . What they leave behind in the night, is that total abandon you can only afford those few years between being a kid and suddenly being old.
This is one from the heart. It's got everything, the riotous humor and fun of outrunning the crew of an Elvis stuntshow, the tempo and jumpcuts of a strobelight punkclub, a heart as big as the V 8 Walter puts in his Ford Granada and the thrill of a deathmatch...in foosball !!
The film reminds us how intoxicating friendship can be and how good it can feel to be that drunk from a toast to a leaving friend. Like the perfect song: happy in its rhythm, sad in its melody. Floyd says early into the film something like" I wish everyone could have his own soundtrack, that there would always be music. So that if you're really down, there would still be the music...and when you're the happiest in your life the record would skip and the moment would never end..." After their last night, when Floyd looks up into the Hamburg sky one last time, the soundtrack to the film DOES skip and captures that perfect moment, the essence of parting, that loss that really isn't and that unbearable inevitability that tomorrow your best friends will be far away.
I can only hope that this total charmer finds a distributor in the U.S.. I'm sure it would find an audience somewhere in the same aisles that loved that "Big Wednesday" coming of age urgency, the tempo and irreverence of "Go", the unpretentious humor of "It's a jungle out there" or " No more Mr. nice guy" and the unspoken loyalty in any of the "Winnetou" movies. As for Sebastian Schipper the Director, whose eloquence in talking about his film ( and cars ) at the German Filmfestival in Los Angeles rivals the ease with which this film speaks to you - In a way I'm already sorry to see him becoming famous. He'll soon join Tom Tykwer as the posterboy for the new german film and I'm afraid he'll lose his genius eye and savant heart much like he lost his enthusiasm for foosball........
