"Der Geschmack von Apfelkernen" or "The Taste of Apple Seeds" takes us on a journey into the life of Iris (Hannah Herzsprung) and back into her youth. So the movie is split into two parts taking place mainly at the same location, but during different decades. It's not a clean split though as it jumps back in time basically every time when Iris today arrives at a significant place from her youth or just every time something happens that makes her remember. Unfortunately, the execution is pretty shoddy. It jumps back and forth all the time and the film is best near the end when it stays in the past for a significant period of time. Another criticism I have is about the beginning. The whole film is basically almost exclusively about a great number of female characters. When they start presenting them early on, it simply goes way too fast to make a connection between the names and the faces. often the faces aren't even shown early on, so you have basically no idea (until 30 minutes in for some characters) who they're talking about and how that person is related to the characters. Especially the two girls sitting on top of the tree and being pretty much the only reference for the movie's title disappear as quickly as they enter the picture. It's really a very minor reference. The title sounds beautiful, but it almost has nothing to do with the film at all.
The film's biggest problem is another one though. It's the dialogs (and, to a lesser extent, character's actions) in the grown-up sequences. The line delivery of the characters is not the problem at all. Their dialogs are just horribly written, especially the ones between Iris and Florian Stetter's character. The writers listed here for this film are Rochus Hahn and Uschi Reich and I don't know one did the flashbacks to the past and the other the current times or if they came up with it together, but it's simply a disastrous result that drags down the whole movie a lot. The talking is kitschy and unrealistic to an extent that it shouldn't even be shown on television. I see Hahn wrote "Das Wunder von Bern" and I remember liking this film a lot, so my assumption is that it was Reich, but that's really just a guess. Anyway, it's really a shame as the actors are all at least mediocre, some good and Herzsprung and Habich have proved in the past that they can carry a movie nicely with the right material.
The story is not all that bad, but while it has its moments, it has weaknesses too. Basically, they packed an exaggerated deal of drama into the film. That includes a main character's question who her real father is, lots of deaths and love-stories, Lolita stories, a lesbian plot etc. who are mostly not even remotely developed to a point that could be described as satisfying. The drama felt often over the top and really just included for doing something spectacular than for a real purpose and the overly dramatic score didn't exactly help either. The film goes for pretty much exactly two hours and yet I felt that it didn't have enough material for such a running time. I wish they could have worked out 1-2 story lines more competently and left out some of the others. On a sidenote, "Iris" spelled backwards is NOT "Risi".
All in all, I was rather disappointed with the movie. While I enjoyed the acting occasionally and especially the child actors did a pretty good job, they couldn't save the horrible script (including the weird and pointless electricity plot from Bäumer's character) and turn the film into a success. If you're into schmaltzy movies, you could still give this one a go. Strangely enough, there were lots of people, even including hard-boiled men, who cried pretty much from start to finish, which did really surprise me and the "highlight" was when the closing credits ran and a slow tune was playing some of the audience already talked and another woman screamed into the room that everybody needs to shut the ... up as the music was so beautiful.
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