"Forget About Nick" is a German mostly German-language movie from 2017 and it is another collaboration by director Margarethe von Trotta and Pamela Katz. I have seen other stuff by them where they worked together like the really terrible Hannah Arendt movie, but this one here is just as bad. You could say that MvT's focus for years has been now to make films about strong female characters and the one thing these films have in common is that they all feel shallow, fake and never below the surface in terms of character studies. For the easily entertained. Now this one here runs for 105 minutes and is another collaboration between von Trotta and Katja Riemann who plays one of the two main characters. I had some slightly positive words for Riemann in another recent work she made wih MvT, but here it is all really negative and bad again. Riemann is hitting all the wrong notes from start to finish and the one thing I find always irritating with her is how virtually she always tries, in every single scene and moments, to make an impact through face expressions and it feels horrible forced, unbearable to watch on many occasions in fact. Of course, as much as you can blame her for that, it also needs to be said that she plays a character that is really impossible to deliver convincingly the way it was written. Be it all the men drolling over her because of how good-looking she is, how athletic she is as we see in one scene, how good she is with children, with people etc., how she is literally always right about everything, but the most cringeworthy moment is probably when somebody tells her she is probably a good business woman too and how she agrees in the most egoistic manner. Her counterpart here is Ingrid Bolsø Berdal (Westworld a.o.), a considerably younger actress and probably also a more talented, not that that means something honestly. She has more than a handful horrible moments in this film too. And it is all so predictable story-wise too despite how bad it may be that you could say oh well maybe they take an inexpected turn, probably one that goes wrong, but at least one that shows just a bit of ambition and dedication and creativity, but no. The two of course become friends and in the end of course the fashion show becomes a hit and so on and so forth.Every ounce of character development (and there sure isn't a lot) feel contrived and fake and just for the sake of it. You never have the impression you are actually watching real people and not just actors with very limited talent. As much negative as I have to say about von Trotta, of course we should keep in mind she is not the one who came up with the script here. Yes she greenlit it, but every concern I am having about the action and the plot is linked to Pamela Katz. And most of all, maybe the film's biggest weakness, this includes the dialogues. I will spare you concrete examples, but this never felt like people speak, even if they are as vain and "likable" (I mean narcissistic by that) and full of themselves. But yeah, there is so much wrong about this movie that it is impossible to saywhat the biggest flaw is really. Especially women should be warned. This film tries to draw you in and tell you that confident, strong, modern women look like that, but don't believe a thing you see here. Don't let them fool you. Besides, story-wise, acting-wise and pretty much everything else here is not by any means worth seeing. Skip the watch. Go for something else instead. A deffinite contender for worst German film from 2017.
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