... how bad a film can actually turn out to be, and not in the trashy-kind-of-funny way. With this one, sky's the limit, or hell rather. Take every possible cliche imaginable, and multiply it by infinity, and you will end up with a film that's derogatory of women, straight men and gay men alike. The aesthetics seem to be taken right out of the worst possible feel-good made-for-tv advertisements, the acting is beyond wooden, and to finish it off, the dubbed dialog (a favorite element of German films, not just when it's applied to foreign-language material) at most times doesn't even match the lip movement. That's all apart from the fact that the emotional and rational motivations of the main characters are utterly incomprehensible, and that this film, in the end, like so many other stories, dares to heroify once again the emotional violation of a woman's wishes as romantic. I don't recommend against seeing this film, on the very contrary: Go see it. Stare into the abyss. Well done, modern German cinema, yet another masterpiece from the country that brought us Metropolis...
Review of In Search of an Impotent Man
