User Reviews

+++CONTAINS SPOILER+++ "Der Rote Punkt" is the work of a Japanese director studying film in Germany. As she revealed during the screening at the 22nd International Filmfestspiele Braunschweig, the main plot of the story, the tragedy that happened to Aki's family, is based on a true story, the director herself has touched while working as a translator in Germany.

The movies sense for emotion is slowly but steadily building up, towards the final meal with Aki's parents. The cross-cultural experiences of Aki and the family she ends up with spending several days together are very true and realistically set. For some this might look like bad acting, for Aki is refined to saying "Ja" (Yes) quite often, regardless of the actual question's answer, but for those that have lived through such an inter cultural experience (being in a country you don't speak the language too well of), you feel suddenly reminded of it. The settings of the movie, Tokyo and Germany, are well placed and people having lived in both places will get a very deep touch towards the movies setting in our present world.

Definitely a must-see, for this low budget movie, which was developed for several years (by the director) and later shot within a single summer, is an emotional, melancholic crossing of two families life many years ago and two persons crossing again, that are somehow connected by a tragic accident.

I understand this movie was made by a student of the Munich academy of film, so obviously it cannot be measured by the same standard as if it was made by an experienced team. But anyway the amount of logical and cultural mishaps was still too big even for a film student. After all, this movie got a theatrical release, and was not shown at a "student film festival" or the likes. The actress playing Aki (the lead) was excruciatingly overwhelmed by the job, while most actors in the supporting roles did a solid job, with the Japanese actors in the Tokio setting being the best (because they were proper, experienced actors).

There were a lot of easy errors in this movie - for instance, the when the main character goes to Germany (for the first time), right after she arrives she is seen carrying a huge rucksack by the "Jack Wolfskin" brand. Unfortunately, this brand is not available to buy in Japan. So, we are required to believe that she brought her travel belongings in a Japanese brand rucksack, then, first thing in Germany bought a huge backpack by Jack Wolfskin (unlikely as she seems to not have brought a lot of money *and* was never shown being anywhere near an area where there are outdoor equipment stores). The other, more annoying thing was that there was no stringent, believable concept of how well the lead actor speaks and understand the German language. While she could barely say more than "yes" and "no" in German and throughout the movie was pictured as to not understand even basic question like "where do you want to go", towards the end of the movie, she suddenly, magically, understands very complicated descriptions given by the father about what happened on the night of the accident.

Apart from these flaws that are really too annoying for a theatrical release, the real problem of the movie is the questionable "message" it tries to transport.

In the beginning, we are introduced to Aki's life in Japan. She seems to just have finished University and is now looking for a job. Only that she's not really interested in finding a job but much more in sitting around and giving a meaningful stare. She meets her boyfriend, who is a "normal person", eager to find a highly paid job. This seems to not be good enough for his "elitist" girlfriend Aki. For example, when he says "I want to get a job with good pay, like a manager", she asks him in a very arrogant, condescending way "...so, you want to become just like your boring father?"

Here lies the main problem of the movie - while we are supposed to like Aki, she comes across as just another pretentious, self-important, westernized brat (she grew up in Japan, mind you). Now, you just do not meet this kind of people in Japan. The decadent world-view that people who are looking to get a good job are "unimaginative and boring" and people who are "doing everything right" are somehow less worthy human beings than dreamy-eyed, confused 20-something spoiled brats, is a purely western one. It later is confirmed by a dialog between Aki and the daughter of the German family - when Aki is asked if she has a boyfriend, she says "hmm, I don't know really", and then she is asked "is there a problem between you and your boyfriend", she says "he does everything right".

Now, I don't know what kind of people the Japanese director of this movie met in Germany, but it all sounds a bit too much that she has assimilated that dangerous, backwards, far-left world view of the German "68er" generation that holds a tight grip over German culture since 5 decades now. Which would be fine if the director didn't just take a supposedly Japanese character like Aki hostage and plastered this cheap and clichéd world-view on her. This is where the movie is really sloppy.

I was fully expecting the movie to end with Aki falling in love with the "do-no-good" son of the German family" who we are supposed to see as "not doing everyhting right and therefore being a very very interesting person, unlike that Japanese idiot capitalist boyfriend".

Basically, this movie portrays a very very western, very very German, very very far-left standpoint on capitalism - if you want to get a good job, you are a boring person, if you are spending your days speeding up and down the German countryside on your motorbike and give your parents trouble, you're super-romantic, highly interesting person.

Now, we have plenty of far-left, fatuous filmmakers in the Western world already, so there is no need for more film students coming to Europe to try to imitate this decadent bunch and their poor efforts, especially when they make so many easy-to-spot mistakes like I described in the beginning of the movie.

Very very poor movie making (which can be excused by the directors' age) and a clichéd, too overly simplistic message which may have been interesting in 1968, but surely not today.