"Bungalow" is a German movie from 2002 that is also mostly in the German language. It has its 15th anniversary this year and was the first full feature film work by director Ulrich Köhler, who is also one of the two writers. The cast includes some relatively known names even today 1.5 decades later like Striesow, Castel and Dyrholm. strangely enough Lennie Burmeister, who was the lead in here has not acted in almost 10 years now. Looking his name up, it seems as if he is focusing more on skateboarding apparently. But back to this movie. It is a pretty short work, only runs for roughly 80 minutes and it is the story of a young man who decides to leave his army squad (Bundeswehr) and disobey orders this way. So the soldiers are basically looking for him for the entire film, but this is just a subplot. The real action is about the boy returning home to see his (ex-)girlfriend and brother once again and we find out about his relationship with these two and how it was in the past and what it may or may not look like in the future. A major addition is also the brother's girlfriend who is considerably older than our protagonist, but still not only goes on a tour with him, but even has sex with him. Eventually, this one is one of just a few aspects that make the film appear somewhat unrealistic at times. This is quite a shame as the general premise isn't a bad one and could have made for a decent, relatively tense and atmospheric family drama. But I guess Köhler was not at his best yet (as the good moments like the ending were just too rare) or he just doesn't appeal to me as I for example wasn't impressed at all by his considerably later work "Schlafkrankheit". I can only say the stuff I already saw from him does not make me curious about what I haven't seen yet. As for this one here, I have to give it a thumbs-down and I believe it was a missed opportunity as with some better writing, love to detail and perhaps actors as well this could have turned out a much better film. I think all the awards attention is not justified. Watch something else instead.
Review of Bungalow
