"Adieu Paris" is a German 95-minute drama movie from 2013, so it's gonna have its 5th anniversary next year. Director is Franziska Buch and writer is Martin Rauhaus and while both are enjoying very prolific careers, neither is really that famous here in Germany, except maybe to the very biggest film buffs. The cast includes more known names as especially Jessica Schwarz is a household name here, but also her co-lead Hans Werner Mayer has played bigger roles in quite an amount of well-known films. The cast is a co-production between Germany and France (and Luxemburg) and the consequence is that basically almost the entire supporting cast are French actors and I will leave it to French audiences to comment on their degree of popularity. But the film is still in the German language for the most part.
It is a story about a lot of things: love, saying goodbye, faithfulness, professional success and struggles and eventually making the most of your fate by making the right decisions, even if they may not always seem the obvious choices. I certainly believe that the film had decent premises all around, but sadly it never really managed to truly make an impact in any of these areas in a way where I would be at the edge of my seat. It's by no means a bad film, but there was potential for so much more really. This eventually backfires hard when we realize how this film takes itself very seriously and it definitely drifts into pretentious terrain. Also with the German sentence on the film's poster. This is especially tragic as the acting is pretty good in here most of the time, even the supporting players who deliver except those situations where the writing keeps them from doing so. Mayer was very good and very convincing and Schwarz wasn't much worse, even if I may be a bit biased with her as I always somewhat liked her. But these two alone also cannot make up for the weaknesses in writing when it comes to focus, coherency and realism. The latter is an area where the film really tries to succeed, but comes short. The overall outcome is not half as memorable as it wants to be and could have been. The somewhat sweet yet unexpected ending cannot fool me. I give this one a thumbs-down. Not recommended.
It is a story about a lot of things: love, saying goodbye, faithfulness, professional success and struggles and eventually making the most of your fate by making the right decisions, even if they may not always seem the obvious choices. I certainly believe that the film had decent premises all around, but sadly it never really managed to truly make an impact in any of these areas in a way where I would be at the edge of my seat. It's by no means a bad film, but there was potential for so much more really. This eventually backfires hard when we realize how this film takes itself very seriously and it definitely drifts into pretentious terrain. Also with the German sentence on the film's poster. This is especially tragic as the acting is pretty good in here most of the time, even the supporting players who deliver except those situations where the writing keeps them from doing so. Mayer was very good and very convincing and Schwarz wasn't much worse, even if I may be a bit biased with her as I always somewhat liked her. But these two alone also cannot make up for the weaknesses in writing when it comes to focus, coherency and realism. The latter is an area where the film really tries to succeed, but comes short. The overall outcome is not half as memorable as it wants to be and could have been. The somewhat sweet yet unexpected ending cannot fool me. I give this one a thumbs-down. Not recommended.
