Wednesday, May 10, 2017

You and I - a film review

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.



You and I trailer









-->

No comments: