User Reviews

"Auf der Straße" is a German television film from 2014, so this one is also already comfortably over five years old. The director here is Florian Baxmeyer, who was around the age of 40 here and he will probably always be most remembered for his student movie from 2002, so almost 20 years old now, for this one managed to score a nomination at the Academy Awards. pretty impressive achievement for somebody in their mid20s. This could have been really the beginning of a career focusing on quality mostly through indie movies and art-house films perhaps, but reality is the exact opposite. Baxmeyer took the sellout path and sacrificed all talent and creativity that could have been there once to make one pretty weak and forgettable (sometimes horrible) movie after the next, frequently for ARD (Degeto). Just like he did here. I mean of course he wants to make money, but it's still pretty embarrassing in my opinion. Especially because the money he made this way all gomes from forced GEZ fees that have resulted in the exact opposite of creativity on thousands of occasions (i.e. movies). Take a deeper look into Baxmeyer's body of work if you care, but my suggestion is to keep the distance. All his Tatort movies are also fairly self-explanatory. Only fools still see quality in this long-running series.

Baxmeyer's writer here is Thorsten Näter, who is approximately 20 years older than his director and already started a long, long time ago making movies himself. He is also a prolific director and editor, but here he was only in charge of the screenplay. His most recent editing credit is still from the old millennium anyway. But I find it shocking to see somebody who has started in the early 1980s, so is part of the industry for almost 40 years now, 35 when this film was made, and still does not seem to possess the slightest bit of talent when it comes to creative writing and authenticity. Shocking indeed. This is not the first occasion that Baxmeyer and Näter have collaborated and also on another film that came out almost the exact same time we also have Christiane Hörbiger playing the central character. I will get to her in a moment. First, I would like to say that if you take a look at the title here, you have the erman term for "On the street", which is more of a reference to the homeless in German than it is probably with the English saying. The poster here gives away that the international title is apparently "Secret Hope". Oh well, this title could be hardly any more pretentious. I think the German title is already nothing great, but it's nowhere near as bad as the English one. Okay, now for Hörbiger: I think she is a pretty terrible actress. Basically Jutta Speidel in older or Dr. Furtwängler in much older. Treated as some kind of grande dame of German acting, well German-language acting as she is Austrian, but the opposite is the case. She has been in really many of these films and basically played the exact same character the exact same way in each and every one of them. I cannot really comment on Hörbiger's earlier years, simply because I don't remember seeing anything that includes her or maybe I even haven't seen anything. Could be the case as well. But judging from all these Degeto movies in which she has shown up, there is no way it's possible for me to see her as some kind of versatile actress. She is just really bad and there are enough examples from this film here. I will mention a few specific scenes later on.

As for the rest of the cast, they apparently made sure not to get in any big names, so no attention is taken away from Hörbiger. Broich is one that German film buffs have maybe come across on other occasions. And I don't really think she is a bad actress (definitely not as bad as Hörbiger), but the material here made it also impossible for her to shine. It's just terribly written from every perspective. And as with others, Gundi Ellert that is, they also made sure that they did not get in any cast members who really make it obvious to see how poor Hörbiger is. Ellert is a highly limited actress herself and I guess her only purpose here was to make Hörbiger look better. Ellert's character is one who is a good, if not best, friend to the protagonist and of course she is also considerably younger, so we understand Hörbiger is a woman much younger at heart, even if they did their best here in trms of the make-up to hide that Hörbiger was already in her mid70s when she filmed this abomination of a movie. Also Hörbiger's character is of course the more alpha woman in the relationship, the one driven with dedication. No doubt about that. Just one example of a weak inclusion. To be really specific there, we could mention the scene in which Hörbiger's character goes from laughing to crying while talking to Ellert's character. A prime example of poor acting. Every time, the role got a little more challenging, Hörbiger went full ham. The good news it that Ellert's character is basically out of the movie after 40 minutes or so, maybe earlier. Don't remember 100%. The bad news is that all that replaces her are equally poor scenes. Just take the story about the struggling mother-daughter relationship. Moments like Hörbiger's character's cold phone call to her daughter early on to inform her about her father's/husband's death were just one example of poor writing. Depth they did not create like that. It's all about make-believe instead.

Another example would be the talk about a pregnancy that was the reason for mother and daughter drifting apart. But of course, the somewhat happy ending eventually is there and all out of nowhere mother and daughter are getting along better again. But the daughter character (Broich) felt also pointless from other perspective. The argument between her and her man and what she should tell her daughter was also a prime example of an inclusion where this film took itself so seriously, acted as if it was some deep character study, but it's all shallow and fake. This applies more to Hörbiger than anybody else. Take the scene in which she cries early on for her deceased husband (the 112 phone call scene was already bad, but the grieving was way worse to watch, so poorly acted), take the scene when she goes to the bank and has a meltdown in front of everybody as she starts rambling about a mortgage. This was pretty symbolic because there the bank employee she was talking to was also depicted as an evil man. And the focus there is on "man" because Degeto/Hörbiger films are almost always anti-male. Here the best example, even better than the bank fella, is how they unleash on her deceased husband. He lost a lot of money, lied to everybody in the process. This is what men are in these films. Failures or nothing characters like the daughter's husband for example. And ruthless/reckless. Not in a way where he was cheating on his partner this time, but such a revelation also would not have surprised me. And poor Hörbiger's character has to suffer through all of that because of her late husband. When she starts rambling about the vicious circle between work and money and rent, it was again meant as a powerful speech/moment, but Hörbiger got it all wrong.

Then of course the homelessness element: I already mentioned how Hörbiger always plays characters so young at heart. here she does too, so a homeless woman develops an interest in her, a woman half her age that is. Okay. This was ridiculous too. How she shows up at her table first of all (pay attention to Hörbiger's character playfully mean words there, unreal stuff, such bad writing), then the woman is also nearby when Hörbiger's bag is stolen by another homeless guy (a man ofc). Of course! This was set in Hamburg right? And then the other woman is also around when Hörbiger's character contemplates suicide in the end to stop her. That girl is everywhere. Unreal stuff. So realistic and authentic. As I said: Storytelling for the sake of it. Nothing makes sense. One must be really simple to get emotional over this movie. Okay, when Hörbiger is alone in the second half of the film, we basically watch her decline into alcoholism that also came out of nowhere. One scene she is normal, gives some kind of pep talk to the other woman and next scene she is some crazy drunk lady on the street laughing manically. Sure thing. Also how quickly she is out of this situation again and seems to have no problem with drinking is ridiculous. Just as quickly and out of nowhere as she got into it. It is a total insult to people really struggling with alcoholism the way it was elaborated on here. All fake and Hörbiger also shows us her worst acting-wise during the scene with the ducks.

And out of nowhere, the homelessness is also fixed at the very end for the sake of a happy ending because the simple-minded want some positivity I suppose and our Hanna actually finds a little apartment all of a sudden. This is where the film ends. I suppose the filmmakers even want to sell us this ending as authentic and not over-the-top happy as if this was really a good character study, but the exact opposite is the case. I mean they clearly tricked the other reviewer here into seeing quality with these under 1.5 minutes and the rating is north of seven here on imdb? Are you kidding me? Even if only slightly over 50 people rated it. This film feels fake and highly flawed from the very start. Terrible acting on most occasions. The writing is even worse and in its best moments, the film is just forgettable and these surely weren't too frequent. For the most part, it was abysmal and as I stated earlier, those people that this film is about (alcoholics and homeless people) have a right to be offended by how their suffering is depicted here. It has absolutely nothing to do with reality. So don't be fooled, don't be tricked. The outcome here is as bad as expected when I read Degeto and Hörbiger (and Baxmeyer). Lowest possible rating. A movie you want to skip under any circumstance.