Nogo

When you are like me and you regularly try to find some original, often non-American movies to watch as an antidote to the many awful nonsense that we get from Hollywood, you can sometimes find some unknown, but excellent movies. I'm certainly not saying that all 'foreign' movies are better than the American ones, but often you can find something special in them, making watching it a very nice experience. That's of course what I hoped for with this "Nogo" too, but somehow this movie was a bit disappointing...

This movie starts by showing us how the owner of a gas station in the middle of nowhere, somewhere in the Austrian countryside, meets a young woman in his shop. She immediately falls in love with him and the silence around the station. They immediately start to live together and don't wish to see other people, not even clients. When one day a young couple keeps watching the gas station from a distance, but doesn't do anything wrong, the owners don't know what to think. What they don't know is that the couple wants a gas station of their own. That's when we switch to the lives of the other young couple. We learn that the girl suffers from brain cancer and is about to die. Her final dream is to own a gas station with her husband, but they don't have the money for it. She decides to sell some of her organs now that she is still alive, so that they will finally have some money to purchase their dream. But before it gets that far, her husband gets a better idea, they ask some money in advance and fly to America, where the woman can get an operation. When they return home, they pass the gas station and decide to go and have a talk with the manager... The third story evolves around two people who don't seem to know each other. The first one is a prostitute called Rosa, the other one is a bank robber named Sam. When Rosa's car breaks down on her way to the funeral of her brother, she ends up at the gas station. The car will not be immediately ready and that's where Sam comes in. He's about to rob a bank and is doing the final preparations. One of these things is stealing a fast car. When he is asked to pick Rosa up, it's getting obvious that he hasn't seen her for years, but they know each other quite some time. He wants to help her, drives to the gas station and off to the funeral. But they never make it there because they are too busy with each other. When they stop at a bank on their return home, a gun accidentally falls out of Rosa's purse. The clerk is already convinced that this is a hold-up, so Sam and Rosa make the best out of it and rob the bank. Now that their car is known by the police, they need another one. They go back to the gas station to pick up Rosa's car, where they meet the other two couples...

Despite the fact that I like it that the story has been made up by three individual story lines, I can't say that it has been done very well. The best example of how that should be done can be found in the movie "Magnolia" of course, but there are other movies who have used this concept in a better way too. It's quite obvious that the writers had to come up with some weird constructions to make the three couples meet in that gas station and somehow it's all a bit too hard to believe. But if I have to chose which one of the three was the best, than I would go for the second couple. Not that it's always realistic, but it's probably the most normal one of the three and it just offered more realistic drama than the other two did.

Even though the story isn't the best in the genre, I must say that the acting was OK. I've never heard of any of the actors before, except perhaps for Andreas Patton and Jürgen Vogel, who I believed to have seen in some other productions before, but what they showed in this movie sure was worth watching. I would even say more. It's probably the acting that saves the entire movie, because overall this is far from a perfect movie with some weird stories, but I've already seen much worse too.

If you are looking for something different and don't really mind about a story that seems to be quite far-fetched, than you might want to give this movie a try. The acting is OK and makes it all worth watching. That's why I still give it a 6.5/10.

I originally went to see this at the Melbourne International Film Festival because of the cool Sofa Surfers soundtrack. However, I came out of feeling pretty lucky on all counts. This story of love and death was moving, hilarious and philosophical. The characters are complex and interesting as well as very well acted. The cinematography was innovative and the screenplay was witty and real.

Oh yeah...and the soundtrack was pretty good.

A gas station somewhere in Austria forms the centre of this movie. It is the only element which connects all three episodes. Unfortunately, two of the episodes had to be quite brutally constructed to press them into the system and to involve the gas station. The first of the three young couples fall in love at the gas station, which is owned by one of them, and then live there together just the two of them not wishing any company. The second couple have no greater wish than having their own gas station (!) before the woman, who is dangerously ill, dies. Therefore they begin to sell parts of her body to an obscure dealer in order to get enough money. The third couple rob a bank and then break into this particular gas station by accident.

The stories are rather absurd but well-acted and able to keep up the audience's attention. One might interprete them in an existentialist way, one might also consider them nonsense. I see it that way: Two filmmakers let their thoughts be carried away and then couldn't resist the temptation of making a movie out of their ideas. Why not? `nogo' is not an outstanding movie, but okay to watch.