best friends
bestefreunde is a dramatic comedy film by Jonas Grosch and Carlos Val , who also wrote the script together. It premiered on October 24, 2014 in the program of the 48th Hof Film Festival and then ran in November 2014 at the Biberach Film Festival and the Lünen Cinema Festival . From February 26, 2015, it was released to selected German cinemas as part of a self-rental promotion tour and the film was released on DVD on April 24, 2015 .
action
In their mid-thirties, Susi and Mark are still traveling around the southern climes as globetrotters who are independent, both professionally and privately . She takes photos and he writes weblogs under the title hashtag "bestefreunde". The only constant, especially for Susi, is their long friendship.
Returning to cold, unloved Berlin , Susi is immediately confronted with the existential needs of her existence, because electricity and gas in the old rented apartment from childhood are turned off and the property management would like to get rid of her completely for the purpose of luxury renovation. Even the wealthy dad, who is far away himself, does not want to help her out and the plans to finance a trip to South America through a magazine burst at the first attempt. But that's not all: Mark is slowly saying goodbye to eternal youth, shifting South America, earning money first and finally catching Susi ice cold when he suddenly presents her his new love.
Although Susi is a lesbian, she apparently enjoyed Mark's undivided attention so much that she was deeply jealous. She looks in vain for a neutral position, and soon she tries to drive a wedge between Vivian and Mark. When the latter seems to have decided to marry and thus finally to settle down apart from the usual togetherness, every means is right for her. She dupes a boyfriend whose daughter she uses for her own purposes instead of taking care of her, and so does her new lesbian friend, even pretends to be straight and takes on Mark by all means. Unsuccessful. In the end, she interrupts Mark's wedding in the church, but he stands by Vivian and breaks with Susi, who has to painfully say goodbye to the only stable life in her life and at least at this point is forced to “grow up”.
background
Like Jonas Grosch's feature film debut Résiste - Uprising of Interns, the film addresses the professional and private insecurities of his generation and their tendency to hesitantly “grow up” using the example of the main characters “Susi Q”, a woman in her mid-thirties who apparently enjoys being with her best friend as Photojournalist precarious , but completely casual to roam the world.
It was freely financed or produced by Jonas Grosch and his sister and leading actress Katharina Wackernagel , i.e. without funding . It is Grosch's first joint film with Carlos Val and his third feature film and sixth film overall.
The sentence "You cannot pretend to be honey if you are a bratwurst", which the osteopath Dominique (Robert Beyer ) says to Susi Q. ( Katharina Wackernagel ) and indirectly describes her dilemma, was published after the film was released on the Internet "Notes of Berlin" quote pool picked up and disseminated.
reception
The film received various reviews from the critics. Cindy Böhme wrote in the magazine Berliner Filmfestivals that best friends address "problems that every young city dweller" knows. The film balances the "border to overdrawing and exaggeration". Jonas Grosch and Carlos Val have succeeded in making a film that depicts the “suffering and life of so-called creative Berliners”.
Harald Mühlbauer subsumed for the portal kino-zeit.de that the film disregarded "in an interesting way [...] the specifications of the genres". This is sometimes "a bit disturbing", but the film performs "a fine dramaturgical staggering forward that is fully appropriate to the learning process that its protagonist is going through". The film portal kino.de saw a "refreshing independent piece about love, the fear of growing up and the not so narrow-minded bourgeoisie". The cast called it "convincing". Claudia Nitsche also praised “great supporting actors” and “a number of small moments of great beauty” for the teleschau.de media service ; she summed up: "Small budgets, good entertainment."
Sascha Westphal, on the other hand, judged in epd Film that the film “just wanted too much”. In the desired mix of “generation portrait and Romcom based on the American model”, the two sides “simply do not come together”. The "rebellious miniatures" such as "cynical magazine editors" or "cringing apartment managers" would make the film shine, but they were "embedded in a story that does not leave out any cliché of romantic comedies from Hollywood".
Web links
- Best friends in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Best friends ( memento from May 1, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) former Internet presence of the film (until 2016)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e best friends. kinofest-luenen.de, 2014, accessed on April 20, 2015 .
- ↑ Best friends. hofer-filmtage.com, 2014, accessed on April 21, 2015 .
- ↑ a b c Cindy Böhme: “best friends” by Jonas Grosch and Carlos Val. Berliner-filmfestivals.de, 2015, accessed on April 20, 2015 .
- ↑ Esther Stroh: Best Friends. moviepilot.de, 2015, accessed on April 20, 2015 .
- ↑ a b Harald Mühlbeyer: best friends. kino-zeit.de, 2015, accessed on April 20, 2015 .
- ↑ http://www.notesofberlin.com/2015/06/lass-dir-das-mal-gesagt-sein.html
- ↑ Peter Pascal Bunkrad: film review to best friends. kino.de, 2015, accessed on April 20, 2015 .
- ↑ Claudia Nitsche: Nobody can separate good friends? teleschau.de, February 19, 2015, accessed on May 21, 2015 .
- ^ Sascha Westphal: best friends. epd-film.de, 2015, accessed on April 20, 2015 .