Looking for and finding love

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Movie
Original title Looking for and finding love
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 2005
length 105 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
JMK 10
Rod
Director Helmut Dietl
script Helmut Dietl,
Patrick Süskind
production Helmut Dietl,
Norbert Preuss
music Harold Faltermeyer (songs),
Dario Farina
camera Jürgen Juerges
cut Frank C. Müller ,
Inez Regnier
occupation

Looking for and Finding Love is an emblematic cinema comedy from 2005. The love story of the protagonists Mimi and Venus is based on the mythological background of the Orpheus saga . The script was created in collaboration between Helmut Dietl and Patrick Süskind .

content

Main storyline

The composer Mimi Nachtigal met the singer Venus Morgenstern by chance one evening, whereupon they both fell madly in love. For both of them, not only a personal, but also a musical relationship begins, as Mimi writes songs for Venus and ultimately markets them.

But the relationship is overshadowed by constant quarrels, which culminate when the two publicly argue during an award ceremony about the breakup.

Mimi copes with the separation so badly that he retires to Theo Stokowski's holiday home on a Greek island and kills himself there.

On his way to the underworld, he is accompanied by the messenger of the gods Hermes , who is represented as a hermaphrodite - a bisexual being who can appear as both male and female - and whose only goal is to beautify Mimi's life in the underworld .

He repeatedly tries to seduce Mimi, which Mimi cannot get involved with because his thoughts are still connected to Venus.

Meanwhile, Venus continues her career with her new manager Harry, with whom she enters into a relationship without ever being able to forget Mimi. When she sings her hit, written by Mimi, "where does love go ..." during a live performance, she collapses.

While still in the hospital, she decides to return to Mimi because she cannot live without him. She makes her way to Greece, where she enters the underworld through a well to bring Mimi back from there.

Once there, she releases Mimi from Hermes' hands by singing and the two are allowed back into their world on the condition that Venus does not look for her lover Mimi on the way there. An irrelevant argument leads Venus to thoughtlessly break the condition - she turns to Mimi. Now Venus has lost him for good, Mimi has to go back to the underworld, while Venus returns to earth.

After several years, Mimi gets “a three-hour residence permit” to clarify the past in a conversation with Venus.

She recognizes him in the course of the short dialogue - and she also says his name when she leaves. Mimi realizes that of his great passionate love only the tender and somewhat painful memory has survived.

Subplots

The Stokowski's marriage crisis is dealt with in a humorous way. The couple has drifted apart in their relationship. Frustrated, Helena begins an affair with a psychotherapist ( Harald Schmidt ), Theo with the Greek shepherdess Kalypso, the manager of his holiday home. This unknown side of their partners makes the Stokowskis attractive to each other again.

Interpretation - emblematic

  • The emblematic of comedy includes the consideration and description of two types of love and their threats. The "great love" is represented by the protagonist couple Mimi and Venus and the "former great love" embodies Theo and Helena. Your love vegetates in the daily grind, shortly before it goes out.
  • The love of Mimi and Venus succumbs to the impossibility of dialogue - the little stupid everyday argument is stronger than the really big feeling. Theo and Helena's love is refreshed when Theo allows himself to realize his longing for great emotion with Kalypso, from whose “source he drinks”. So the lines of development of the love of both couples run in opposite directions, Theo and Helena win, Mimi and Venus lose.
  • The figure of Hermes Aphroditus, created on the slapstick level as a hybrid being, is on the emblematic level the "alter ego" of Mimi and Venus, visualized in the morphings . Reference should be made to a famous example of the morphing of Hermes: A god - here Hermes - takes the form of the partner of a couple - here Venus - in order to unite with him. This goes back to Heinrich von Kleist's comedy Amphitryon : “Jupiter used the absence of the general Amphitryon to sleep in his guise with Amphitryon's newlywed wife Alkmene. The homecoming of the real husband and mutual confusion about what actually happened throw both spouses into an identity conflict. But even the god must recognize that Alcmene only gives him preference over her husband as long as he appears to her in his form and insofar as the perfect version of the real Amphitryon. "

music

Music plays a major role in the course of the film and especially in the lives of Mimi and Venus.

  • Venus changes from an unsuccessful singing student to a successful chanson singer who fills concert halls.
  • Mimi composes the songs for Venus.

"Orfeo ed Euridice"

While Mimi is taking pills to kill himself, he plays the melody “Oh, I've lost her / Che faró senza Euridice” from Christoph Willibald Gluck's opera “ Orfeo ed Euridice ” on the piano . The tune is recorded by Venus' new manager, who tries to translate it into a modern version. In addition, excerpts from Giacomo Puccini's operas “ Tosca ” (the theme of “ E lucevan le stelle ”, Cavaradossi's loving and melancholy farewell song from the third act) and “ Madama Butterfly ” can be heard.

genre

Due to the musical and (above all, due to Anke Engelke and Harald Schmidt ) humorous interludes, the film is difficult to classify into a certain genre . It contains elements that allow it to be classified in the areas of romantic comedy or drama / musical drama. A categorization as an emblematic comedy is also possible , since in the subtext under the stand-up comedy a symbolic discussion about the possibility and impossibility of lasting love is declined.

Movie review

  • "Vom Searching and Finding Love" is an amusing operetta with some of the greats of the German acting elite in unfamiliar roles and razor-sharp dialogues. But behind this there is a short half-life due to deficiencies in the script as well as an out of place lush production. Note: Blue Box has never made a bad film a success. " Claudia Holz for filmstarts.de
  • "In its pseudo-profound simplicity, the décor looks as if Dietl wanted to make fun of a provincial theater backdrop; the jokes (erections and a hermaphrodite) are so clumsy that one wonders whether Süskind is studying sex clothes in his seclusion." Sebastian Hammelehle, Welt am Sonntag, January 30, 2005.
  • "When Helmut Dietl makes a film, one thing is certain: Everything is right. Starting with the well-composed story, through the magnificent actor performances, to the camera, equipment and music: A Dietl film is a feast for the senses. It always hits with a lot Laconic self-irony, just the right tone. This time bestselling author Patrick Süskind ("The Perfume") took care of that as co-author. A dance of love that is not only funny to scream, like the director of "Rossini", "Schtonk!" and "Late Show" not to be expected otherwise, but also deeply moving. Anke Engelke and Uwe Ochsenknecht provide humor highlights as a stressed city couple who are relieved by a doctor of the soul (Harald Schmidt). And Heino Ferch is allowed in the magic garden of Greek mythology Shine in an unforgettable role ... " Marga Boehle for KINO.de
  • "Helmut Dietl was a really great German film maker, who with Schtonk! (1992) created a Billy Wilder comedy that will be worth seeing for decades. It not only combines political and human-character elements, but also is also incredibly easy and entertaining.Unfortunately, Dietl is increasingly losing his still very good reputation, because the content of his Mimi-Venus story has none of that; its content - the bad pun must be allowed - really for the ass; whoever has seen the film knows what is meant. " Roberto Dzugan for critic.de
  • "Looking for and finding love" can be positioned somewhere between romance, comedy and Greek tragedy. (...) Schlager has always been a good match for Dietl's films, which had something unrestrainedly romantic about them, occasionally bathing in kitsch deliberately and happily. Above all, Dietl and his co-author Patrick Süskind turned Orpheus and Eurydice upside down; which for all the sadness is also very funny and imaginative. (...) His (Dietl's) characters can be calm - that is a compliment in the cinema. " Susan Vahabzadeh, Süddeutsche Zeitung, January 26, 2005.

Awards

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Age indicator for Looking for and Finding Love . Youth Media Commission .
  2. ↑ Hans Georg Schede: The Broken Jug. (= German interpretation aid). Stark, Freising 2007, ISBN 978-3-89449-918-1 , p. 11.

expenditure

  • Helmut Dietl, Patrick Süskind: About searching and finding children . Complete script with numerous photos from the film. With a foreword by Helmut Dietl and an afterword by Patrick Süskind. (= Diogenes TB 23503). Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-257-23503-8 .
  • Patrick Süskind: About love and death. (= Diogenes TB 23589). Zurich 2006, ISBN 3-257-23589-5 .

Web links