Summary

A special love story, crossed by the work environment in which it takes place, which knows how to combine an almost documentary or reality imprint with others that are particularly poetic.

Review

Lara and Clemens (Lana Cooper and Franz Rogowski) are two probationers at a luxurious spa hotel on the Baltic. She as a kitchen helper and he as a physiotherapist. Over time, a special bond will emerge between the two.

This Jakob Lass film could be defined as a particular love story between two totally opposite beings to which picaresque elements are added, due to the way in which Rogowski's character confronts some of the women in the story. Clemens is rather shy, respectful of hierarchies and interested in his work. Lara is impulsive, irreverent, perhaps in this job not by choice and with alcohol problems. As they bond, she is the one in control, making it a series of challenges for Clemens. They are two opposite poles that somehow attract and need each other.

But in the film by Lass (also a co-writer), just as important as the relationship itself is its setting. The power dynamic between Lara and Clemens is part of broader ones corresponding to the workplace, where the interference of managers, colleagues and clients is forcefully felt. On the other hand, the kitchen and the physiotherapy and massage sector could not be more different, a contrast very well marked by the film, although a sequence marks a comical parallelism in part related to the title of the film. It is interesting to compare how both behave inside the hotel and outside it, in that landscape of cold Baltic screens.

Apparently, the only professional actors in the film are the ones that make up the leading couple, while the rest are made up of real hotel staff. This contributes to the imprint at times dry and almost documentary (or reality) of a film that contrasts with others of strange poetry focused on the leading couple.

Cooper achieves with his difficult character all the nuances so as not to hate her and even love her, while Franz Rogowski (later an acclaimed actor in Transit, Undine and Great Freedom) perfectly embodies the naive, slightly angelic and sensitive young man necessary for any story in part picaresque, but at the same time not fully aware or believed in his charm and sensuality and what they provoke.

We can't learn anything about the characters. There are two people who are constantly walking on the beach and fighting. The acting is the best thing in the movie. But I would love to learn more about the characters. Even the constant fighting of the characters in this short film becomes repetitive after a while.

It is a very strange dance these two fine young actors do.. you never know quite where it is going.. and you find it hard to take your eyes off them. The audience for such a film will be very small, it is as far from any mainstream film as one can find. But with many such films they can drift off into unwatchable territory, and although this production time and again flirts with going over the edge, each time it returns to keep us involved. And when it's all over, you're not entirely sure what you have witnessed, but feel as though it was worth your time spent.