Im Juli / In July
Rental with Snacks
This little German film is an interesting genre splice between romantic comedy and buddy road adventure, across the borders of eastern Europe and into a pot of red herrings. Written and directed by Fatih Aikin (who has a cameo as a Romanian border patrolman), the film is littered with surrealist touches, sweetness, and farcical misfortune. After a misleading beginning, our hero, Daniel (Moritz Bliebtreu, the cute guy from Run Lola Run) goes on a quest to find his true love, after having been told he will find her marked in a certain way. Of course the person (Juli) who told him this intended to mark herself in that way, and even goes with him to find this other woman, but the adventure is not so simple as that.
Bliebtreu’s Daniel is, by necessity, a total dope, a fool for love looking everywhere but right in front of him. His bumbling is adorable but still inexcusable for a teacher. The film is called “In July” because it does take place in the month of July; don’t let your imaginations go wild that the film’s Juli, Christiane Paul is doing some kind of Bavarian Annie Sprinkle routine. It’s a sweet fable of trust and how to cross a border illegally and also how to get hopelessly lost and found again in a country where you do not speak the language. In all the hot waves of frustrated love and diminishing returns on this quest to Istanbul, we want to reach into the screen and shake him, but he’s so gosh-darned cute about it, and his intentions are always so good, well, we shake our heads wisely and watch him continue to stumble through.
The titles on the copy I was watching were pale (with no black shading) and hard to read at places, so if you know German, that will probably help you a little bit with the film. I am certain the translation is loose because even knowing just 2-5 words of German I knew I was being deprived of something. Every now and then, the film digresses into some surrealist moments; after Run Lola Run, I am not sure if this is a nouveau German film thing or just something Herr Aikin thought would be fun, but I found it distracting rather than pleasing.
We come back to the bookend beginning (the majority of the movie is flashback) and as in all successful romantic comedies, loose ends get tied, lessons get learned, and no one is who they seemed. While much of the adventure is super-real, this is a bit tidy even for my sensibilities, but over all I found it to be a sweet little film, very enjoyable and entertaining. Check it out if you get the chance.
MPAA Rating unrated: subtitled language, violence & sexuality
Release date 2003
Time in minutes 99
Director Fatih Aikin
Studio Film Philos
