Fucking Berlin (2016) Reviews

• German cinema at it's frequent worst

  yakobb-976892018-07-17

  Despite being allegedly hard-up, the two lead characters look like well fed, well paid ZDF Neo TV presenters, and both about as German as they come. In the book Sonia is an alienated young Italian, and her boyfriend a clueless wandering pole, which kind of makes sense. The film falls prey to the common desire by German filmmakers to make everything look as **nice** as possible, totally undermining any believability in the storyline. Here the homeless boyfriend carries in his tiny backpack apparently only a screwdriver, a torn KRZBRG teeshirt and... an endless wardrobe of expensive Adidas Neo clubwear. In the book Sonia lived in scummy Moabit in the 2000s - in the film though she lives today on one of the most expensive streets in Berlin. The filmmakers might as well have just given her an Audi A7 to drive around in while she ponders the source of her money problems. An insane amount of banal exposition is delivered in PERFECTLY accented German, the film whizzes through a tour of locations that it looks like they got from last years Lonely Planet, and worst of all there is no drive or tension in the story whatsoever. Sonia, despite an apparently hedonistic and expensive lifestyle (note to filmmakers - drugs in Berlin are cheaper than beer) appears in every scene looking like she just stepped out of the health-club showers after 9 hours of sleep. There is nothing to care about in this film unless you just want to look at moving postcards of a 20-year-old's idealised vacation in "cool" Berlin.

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• overdone cliches and casting mismatch

  buhmann882018-07-18

  95 minutes of cheesy cliches, a plot that drags along without much tension or character development, jokes only the actors can laugh about, holes and illogicalities in the plotline and a main actress that doesn't match her role at all. She would be a good fit for the rich daughter of some industrialist in a "Rosamunde Pilcher" episode that meets her prince on some white horse while managing the family hotel - rather not for a promiscuous italian prostitute.

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• no words

  temnitamaine2018-03-21

  I never knew a movie can make me regret this much I saw it . I never regret anything , but this movie was so with no sens and bad that I regret at all I lose 2 hours of my life watching this s**t. Sorry

• Interesting snapshot of 2000's berlin

  IMdber2017-05-20

  The problem i see in the movie is with the casting: the actress that plays Sonja is just too normal, with model-like looks, whereas the author of the novel was much more peculiar. "Einsam in Berlin" -- an Italian, with rather voluptuous looks, she must have felt a bit isolated in Berlin, which eventually lead to the lifestyle. I think there is a disconnect because of the casting. Even if the book material might have not been very dramatic (being a biography, not a story), the movie is actually very watchable. The soundtrack, the city are beautiful, you see a snapshot of everyday berlin for younger, poorer people. It's really a story about a lonely woman in berlin, during the age of legal prostitution and as berlin becomes a meltpot of its own. The layer of people that she meets might be very specific, but they are out there: the immigrants, the drug addicts, people from poorer regions. Perhaps the author wanted to separate her 'normal life' from her 'prostitution life' -- so we don't see much of interaction with her friends at school, or, perhaps, the author was autistic enough to be in a more isolated position, and the 'prostitution' life filled the friendless void. But in essence, the movie gives a different angle on a woman and a city, not that glamorous as 'Sex & City', but there are layers in the society, and the movie captured one of them. The layers are different, the upshots of the stories are very similar.

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• A failure because of lack of creative talent from almost everybody involved

  Horst_In_Translation2016-11-06

  "Fucking Berlin" is a German movie from this year (2016). It is based on the autobiography of Sonia Rossi and it too four people to adapt this one into the screenplay for this movie here. One of the quartet is Florian Gottschick, who is also the director of this 90-minute film. It is actually shocking how many people worked on this film in the writing department and how much of a mess it turned out to be because at least one of them must have recognized how bad it all turned out to be. One of the major problems is lead actress Svenja Jung. She may have nice looks (nothing too special though), but that's really it. The worst thing by far is her voice-over narration delivery that totally hurt the film. Her acting in the scenes when we actually see her is not too convincing either. Maybe it is not that obvious because her fellow cast members are equally underwhelming. Now about the story: It is obvious that Gottschick had a lot of ambition for this film here. Sadly, the film turns out to be a project where ambition and actual creative craft are far far away from each other. Many scenes were pretty cringeworthy to watch because it became obvious how much Jung and Gottschick wanted it to be a relevant watch, a character study about a young woman who first gets lost in the world of webcam action, later on in the world of prostitution. But it is no such thing. Instead the film eventually goes for cheap thrills and the shots at being very controversial bring nothing but embarrassing sex scenes. Embarrassing for the audience and for the creators as well. The emotional scenes with the main character crying for example rang very false and never felt authentic or even touching. This film lacks authenticity too much that it is not only not the case that you care for the character and her happiness, but that you really don't care for her at all, not just that you don't feel for her. I could mention a couple scenes that were especially bad in terms of acting, execution and writing, but I will not go into detail any further. If you decide to watch the film (and you really should not), then you will know which scenes I meant. In my opinion, this is a definite contender for worst German movie of 2016. Yes it is as bad as the embarrassingly baity title implies and I suggest you stay far far away from this piece of garbage.

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