You and I (Breaking Glass
Pictures, 2014) is the kind of film that sneaks up on you. Starts out painfully
slow, with not very appealing characters off on a not very interesting trip
somewhere and takes forever to be about something. You’re not meant to know
what it’s about until it’s over. You only know that it will involve the
evolution of an intimate but hitherto non-sexual friendship.
The road trip begins when Jonas picks up his English friend Phillip at Tegel Airport
in Berlin, who flies in from London to join him as he embarks on a photography project. They drive their van loaded with camping
equipment out into the boonies, a place called Uckermark, an hour and a bit, plus a couple centuries, northeast of Berlin on the Polish border. The two of them drink wine and swim
and horse around with no clear plan in mind. And apparently no time limits. At some point they come across
Boris, a Polish hitchhiker, whom Jonas invites to join them once he learns he
knows the area. Boris seems a tad
unnerved at first at Phillip’s revelation that he is gay and cannot quite
figure out what kind of relationship Phillip has with Jonas.
 |
| Zwichow Castle |
What starts out as a very slow moving road trip by two
uninteresting characters joined by a third guy your instincts should tell you
it's probably best to avoid, becomes an erotic tease as you get to watch what
Boris’s presence does to Jonas and Phillip’s friendship. Boris, the horny homophobe has no reason not to explore the
unexpected presence of a handsome gay guy fate has thrown in his path.
It’s not unimportant to the plot that no other human beings are in sight. And
there is nothing that calls them away from eating, sleeping, being young, breaking their way
into abandoned castles, swimming in the nude and pilfering the wine cellar.
In German and English (Phillip and Jonas both switch back
and forth). Go to Settings to turn on English subtitles. Since it’s a German
film, there are lots of full frontals for those who go in for that sort of
thing. Streaming on Amazon Prime.
-->
No comments:
Post a Comment