User Reviews

***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** The basis to this movie is the classic novel "Die Marquise von O." by Heinrich v. Kleist, as all reviews in Germany relentlessly touted. Story: Young woman gets raped while unconscious, but in a twist of irony, falls in love with the perpetrator, not knowing he did it. Even when she finds out, she decides to forgive him. In this modern version, the girl (Julietta, played by Lavinia Wilson) is visiting her boyfriend in Berlin during the legendary techno-event Love Parade. She loses sight of him, goes off on a drug-induced trip and finally collapses. She is rescued from drowning by Max (Barnaby Metschurat), who stays with her while she is unconscious, and "in an unreal, almost dream-like moment" (this is from the hype-text on the back of the DVD), he sleeps with her. So, ok, we hate him. What a total jerk. She, meanwhile, wakes up, knows nothing, goes back home and discovers later that she is pregnant. She goes back to Berlin to tell her boyfriend the good nows, meets Max again along the way and falls in love. Then she finds out... What is an admittedly perverse premise is a solid foundation for a movie about conflicting emotions, guilt trips, anger and - ultimately for Julietta - forgivenness and coming of age. But the movie falls short of the mark by allowing a truly incredible happy ending. What sympathy Julietta acquires along the way is lost by her decisions in the final sequence of the movie. Lavinia Wilson does a very good job of portraying the emotional roller-coaster any girl in her situation would be experiencing. Also, she has tremendous screen presence and good credibility playing a 17 year old. Barnaby Metschurat manages to win over viewers with great charm and helplessness and a sense of his hating himself - which everyone is expecting. I don't mention the boyfriend because he didn't add anything except providing dialogue. All in all a good attempt to make this story believable, but not successful and honestly - who would buy it?

Overall this film was well acted, at least on the part of the main characters.

The major issue I had with the film was the fact that after this guy, Max, admits to raping Julietta (she is indignant and mad for a whole five minutes) she forgives him. At this point she is pregnant and doesn't know if it is Max or Jiri's kid, but breaks up with Jiri for no real reason and has dinner with Max. As a woman I found this whole part to the story to be completely far-fetched.

I also found that the film's language was a lot stronger than I thought it would be and the sex scenes were quite...detailed.

On the whole I didn't enjoy this film - the storyline's fault.

"Julietta" is a German movie from 2001, so this one had its 15th anniversary last year. It runs for 100 minutes and was directed by Christoph Stark who is also among the trio of writers that came up with the script. If you take a look at the cast, you can already expect roughly what this film would look like, especially if you are a German film buff. Cast members are Lavinia Wilson, Barnaby Metschurat, Matthias Koeberlin, Uwe Kockisch and Julia Jentsch and with the exception of the latter, their careers have not exactly been really great in the last decade roughly. I think these were actors that may have good charisma and may have been at the right place at the right time, but in terms of acting range, they are a bit on the underwhelming side. Admittedly in their favor you need to say that the script was not really doing them any justice. It is almost painful to see how they tried so hard to make it a controversial movie involving a difficult parallel between love and crime as this is the story of a young girl who falls in love with her rapist, all while having a boyfriend of course. And the makers here sure did what they could to make the rapist look likable and the boyfriend seem really unlikable. Anyway, like I said, it all feels really for the sake of it. A famous German film from slightly earlier is "Run Lola Run" and I occasionally felt that this one here is definitely inspired by that one as it just feels sometimes that they were trying to make a similar occurrence that in some cases and situations crime may be an acceptable measure if the outcome is eventually positive and satisfying for (almost) everybody. But I don#t think it worked out. Then again, I am not exactly a fan of RLR either. The only thing that stays really memorable about this movie here is Lavinia's beautiful physicality and Wotan Wilke Möhring's strong, even if very brief, scene-stealing performance. That's not enough though. i give it a thumbs-down. Not recommended.