User Reviews

Here we have the German live action short film Dolphins from 1999, so this one is easily over 20 years old now and when I say German, I mean that this is a German production. It also says Germman for language here, but this is really only partially correct as there is no talking in this film, at least none that we can hear. What you hear instead, is basically a soundtrack of instrumental music. For me, this made the entire thing really feel more like a ballet than film. There wasn't any dancing, but the sometimes exaggerated movements from the characters made it feel that way and the underwater sequences of course also felt like really swift at times, while on other occasions rather smooth. But let's not move entirely away from the basics: The director here is Farhad Yawari and to this day it has been his only filmmaking credit, also for writing and with all the time passed, it is fairly safe to say that there will be nothing new to his body of work. It is a bit surprising because this film here garnered a great deal of awards recognition, also abroad. For example, the prestigious Palm Springs Film Festival really liked it. This also may have had to do with this film including no spoken language, which means that no matter which languages you speak or don't speak, you can check it out no matter where you are from. If you want to, that is. I'd rather say skip, but I will get to that later.

The lead actress here is Julia Brendler and she is one I always find a bit fascinating. Not really because I think she is particularly talented actress, but rather because of where she is from and also because she is simply stunning and 100% my type. This applies to her being in her 20s here and also applies to her being in her 40s now. But as I stated, she is not the most talented and most versatile performer out there. This is also proven by all the stuff she did after this film here and that's been really many terrible projects unfortunately. She went all in there with Degeto, frequently evven with lead performances. No respect for that from me. The perhaps more talented cast member here is Marco Hofschneider and if you find his face familiar, then this is probably because of him being the lead in Agnieszka Holland's Europa Europa that won so many awards almost a decade before this film here, but basically only did not win Best Foreign Language Feature because Germany submitted another film. Terrible decision. Anyway, I am not really sure what Hofschneider is doing now career-wise, but he's nowhere near as big as he was back then. And with back then I mean 20 years ago. Or 30 years ago even. Kinda unreal that the time in-between this film here and the movie One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest is almost the same now as the time between this film here and the year 2021. Or if you happen to read this a little later, then maybe the latter is even the longer timespan.

Now a few words on the story: During these 40 minutes, we follow the female inmate of a psychiatric ward and her special relationship with her goldfish that helps her basically to flee into a world of joy and relief in which she is connected with dolphins. Thus the title reference. There is an evil female warden (thus the Ofotcn reference) and she is the main antagonist in here. When we see her try to grab the fish relatively early on and this was filmed from the water, from the fish's perspective pretty much, it was a fairly memorable shot. In general, the camera work here is not bad at all. A bit of a pity the filmmaker did not end up making more stuff. But he should have picked another writer perhaps and not come up with the script himself. I do think that the material was enough only for 20 minutes perhaps, so half the running time, and the consequence was that the film began to drag eventually and not just a bit. Pity. Awards bodies and also imdb voters seem to disagree, but thats how I saw it. It's still not a terrible film by any means, but there is certainly room for improvement. Must also be said that the implied romance story between the two (with the girl being rather shy and distant because of her issues and the male nurse being more focused) did not work well enough to really get me emotionally involved in the more dramatic moments like when the guy is thrown out. Literally in fact. The scenes when the girl gets poseyed (is that the right word? like in the sense that she is pushed down and cannot move) are more haunting and sad, at least to me, and reminded me a bit of Angelina Jolie's Oscar-worthy performance in Changeling. Anyway, the ending kinda fit here. It's not super happy, but a bit hopeful nonetheless. Overall, this film gets a thumbs-down from me unfortunately and I think I have made myself clear why I think this was not a particularly memorable watch. It's also pretty difficult to find this film nowadays, but if you get lucky, then you can go for it. Or better don't. It's probably a better watch on the big screen at some movie theater, but I think chances are literally zero this gets shown to a big audience again. Probably the better choice.