How very Berlin of you.
(2019) Romance (Saban) Keira Knightley, Helen Mirren, Luke Wilson, Jim Sturgess, Mickey Rourke, Jenna Dewan, Emily Beecham, Dianna Agron, Veronica Ferres, Diego Luna, Iwan Rheon, Charlotte Le Bon, Sibel Kekilli, Nolan Gerard Funk, Julia Dietze, Sylvester Groth, Toni Garn, Yvonne Maria Schafer, Pheline Roggan, Robert Stadlober, Rafaëlle Cohen, Alexander Black, Hannelore Elsner. Directed by Dianna Agron, Peter Chelsom, Claus Clausen, Fernando Eimbcke, Justin Franklin, Dennis Gansel, Dani Levy, Daniel Lwowski, Stephanie Martin, Josef Rusnak, Til Schweiger, Massy Tadjedin and Gabriela Tscherniak
Veteran travelers tend to not want to make Berlin a destination. As major cities go, it has little to distinguish itself from any other large city – Cleveland, for example – and while there is more of a history in Berlin than Cleveland, the connotations of some unpleasantness 70 years ago lingers on. Berlin is where you go when Munich is fully booked.
The fifth in the Cities in Love series – of which only four have made it to America (a 2014 anthology set in Tbilisi has yet to receive American distribution) which began with Paris Je t’aime back in 2006 features a handful of directors (there are ten here) creating short vignettes set in that particular city and all featuring something to do with love. An “opposites attract” romance between a living statue (Stadlober) and an Israeli singer/activist (Cohen) who take up competing spaces in a par serve as a linking device as they continue to run into each other all over the city.
The vignettes take place in between the linking sequences and include British aid worker (Knightley) stationed in Berlin bringing home a young refugee kid in “just for a night” while her cantankerous mom (Mirren) is visiting; a jaded, aging lothario (Rourke) hooking up in a hotel bar with a beautiful young woman (Garn) who hides a devastating secret, a stressed-out big budget film director (Wilson) falling in love with the city and Dewan, one of the citizens therein, and so on and so forth.
As a travelogue, the movie works, filming taking place near familiar tourist landmarks but not really exhibiting much thought toward Berlin’s recent checkered past other than through the animated credits sequence. We also get a glimpse of Berlin’s notorious nightclub scene with pulsating beats, a deplorable excess of neon and beautiful people getting happily hammered.
Despite having a fine cast, most of the sequences are curiously flat, as if the directors, knowing they had a limited amount of screen time rather than setting the pace on fire rather left it smoldering, rather than sizzling, giving the overall experience a kind of flatness that is off-putting. These sorts of anthologies depend heavily on the cast and the writing to tell a good story in about ten minutes of screen time, but that happens less often rather than more. To be fair, Wim Wenders’ Angels of Desire (which is referenced here) aside, Berlin is not known for romance and neither will this movie be.
REASONS TO SEE: The cast is excellent.
REASONS TO AVOID: As with most anthologies, some of the segments work, some don’t
FAMILY VALUES: There is a fair amount of profanity, sexual content and some brief nudity.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Future installments in the series are said to include Shanghai and Jerusalem, with New Orleans, Delhi and Tokyo to follow.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, AppleTV, Fandango Now, Google Play, Microsoft, Netflix, Redbox, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 6/18/20: Rotten Tomatoes: 11% positive reviews: Metacritic: 34100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: New York, I Love You
FINAL RATING: 6/10
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