The latest in the Cities of Love series (a la Paris, je t’aime or New York, I Love You,) this film brings together a series of shorts set in a particular city, each taking a different angle to examine love, sex, and/or relationships. I’d say Berlin, I Love You is an uneven film, and the whole feels less than the sum of its parts.
Because the film is constructed of ten shorts, there isn’t a single plot to summarize. One of the shorts weaves between all the others, showing the gradual entanglement of a pair of street performers, one a cynical Berliner, the other a cheerful Israeli. But we see lots of different stories here. A depressed and jilted man receives a new lease on life thanks to the GPS in his used car. An aid worker tries to get her mother to understand her passion for working with refugees. Four women in a laundromat ponder the abuses of men. A successful but disillusioned filmmaker finds himself taken by a woman performing on the street with puppets. And more.
I haven’t seen all the Cities of Love films, but I was expecting Berlin to feel like more of a character in the movie. It does in a few of the shorts, especially with the street performers. The opening words of the film are, “So this is Berlin, a pounding heartbeat of a divided muscle, grown out of fear of complete destruction.” And later, when the Berliner is taking the Israeli on a tour of the city, he translates some graffiti that reads, “This house used to be in a different country.” But a lot of the shorts have settings that feel a bit anonymous to me. A film like this is meant to be a tourism board’s dream, but after watching it, I still don’t feel like I have that much of an understanding of Berlin.
I like that the film covers lots of different types of love. When it comes to romantic love, we’re mostly looking at the meet cute variety, with strangers discovering one another in the city. But we also see familial love in different forms, along with platonic love, love for humanity, love for a place, and the love born of solidarity. It gives the film more variety than simply showing ten ten-minute romances.
Within the shorts themselves, some are better than others. As such, it’s not surprising that my takeaway was “uneven.” A few vary widely from the others in tone, with one leaning into action/suspense while a couple others take on a dreamlike quality in places. But while I like some of the shorts more than others, I wouldn’t say any of them are exactly a knockout. Overall, they range from “okay” to “pretty good.”
One thing all the Cities of Love films have in common is an eclectic cast. This one boasts the likes of Helen Mirren and Keira Knightley playing a mother and daughter, and Jim Sturgess (who I still remember best from that Beatles musical Across the Universe) plays scenes opposite a car. Mickey Rourke plays a sad sleezy American, Emily Beecham (the Widow from Into the Badlands!) plays a caring survivor, and Luke Wilson and Glee’s Dianna Agron connect over puppetry. And they never shared scenes together on Game of Thrones, but Sibel Kekilli (Shae) and Ian Rheon (Ramsay Bolton) unite for a short about a taxi ride gone awry.
Diego Luna appears in a segment called “Sunday Morning.” Before the film came out, I remember hearing about the controversy over him playing a trans woman, but his character is actually credited as “Drag Queen.” (Since she’s in drag the whole time, I’ll use she/her pronouns.) She’s walking through the city after a fight with her boyfriend, and when she stops to fix her heel, she has an unexpected encounter with a boy (credited as “Teenager” and played by Michelangelo Fortuzzi.)
I’ll take the director’s word for it that the character is a queen who, out of drag, identifies as a cis man. It makes the short less problematic in a couple of ways, and I don’t doubt his intentions in making it. But onscreen, there’s little to distinguish that the character is a drag queen and not a trans woman, which can give the impression of it being a harmful story rather than just a clumsy one. The teenager is curious about the drag queen and ultimately asks for a kiss, wondering what it’s like to kiss a man, at which point she tells him, “Technically, right now you’re in front of woman, so it’s not gonna work.”
I’m reminded of Angel from RENT, a character written by a straight man who doesn’t really understand drag queens and/or trans people, and so the result feels confused and a little muddy. Honestly, I feel like if Luna had drag queen makeup on and the character had some reference to having left a party or recently been performing, a lot of the clunkiness would be smoothed over. But his makeup is much more natural-looking, which doesn’t fit with the queens I’ve encountered, and so the script feels clumsy.
Apart from all that, what do I think of the actual performance? Issues aside, I think Luna does a reasonable job here. His performance is soft and doesn’t feel artificial, and I like the dynamic the drag queen strikes up with the teenager. They relate to each other as two lost people who are both alone early in the morning, who’ve both been disappointed by people they love. In that way, they feel on equal footing, but as their conversation continues, the drag queen takes on more of a maternal stance. It’s sweet when she takes the beer he offers her, but then won’t give it back because he’s a minor. She answers his questions with patience, encouraging his curiosity while gently pushing back on his ignorance. If the writing was better, this might’ve been a nice short.
Recommend?
In General – Not really. None of the shorts fully rose to the occasion for me.
Diego Luna – Not necessarily. He’s only in it for about ten minutes, and while it’s a decent performance, the short’s baggage makes it hard to enjoy.
Warnings
Sexual content, violence (including references to sexual assault,) language, drinking/smoking, and thematic elements.
No comments:
Post a Comment