Drei

Writer/director Tom Twyker (Run Lola Run, Perfume, Heaven, The International. Paris, je t'aime) is proving to be one of the most fearless and creative talents in film today. He knows how to create strange stories that take us by surprise, present them with excellent actors, selects and composes musical scores that are as perfect as any being created, introduces just enough philosophy and scientific investigation into timely topics to challenge our brains, and tops it off with inventive photography - superimposing split screens that enhance not only the progress of the story but also allow the presentation of brief glimpses of 'dangerous' ideas that stirs the cauldron to boiling.

3 is a fascinating tale. Simon (Sebastian Schipper) is an artistic architect who works with sculptors to bring their art into being. He is in a longterm relationship with Hanna (Sophie Rois) who is a television journalist cum scientist who is widely popular in their hometown of Berlin. Simon and Hanna are in their forties and deeply in love. Simon is informed that his mother has advanced pancreatic carcinoma and when his mother attempts suicide with an overdose and fails, she is brain dead, supported on machines. Simon stays at her bedside while Hanna continues her line of investigation about new stem cell theories, attending lectures by the handsome Adam (Devid Striesow) - a married man with children who leads a separate life of clandestine but short-lived gay affairs. Simon's mother dies and Simon is diagnosed with testicular carcinoma, undergoes an orchiectomy and begins chemotherapy, losing his hair in the process. All of this he shares with Hanna: the two decide they probably should marry and Hanna wants children while Simon thinks world timing is poor for starting a family (he is also aware of the fact that his operation and chemotherapy may represent the end of his sexuality and fertility).

Though devoted to Simon, Hanna is attracted to Adam and finds ways to be near him. Soon they are in a physical love affair. Simon recovers his disease by swimming in a beautiful Berlin gym where he quite incidentally meets Adam, shares his operation with the stranger in the locker room, and Adam proceeds to demonstrate that Simon is indeed not impotent! Simon has new feelings aroused, and he and Adam begin a love affair. Hanna and Simon get married but still each of them has feelings for Adam. When Hanna discovers she is pregnant the story spins to its conclusion and the triptych of the title is established.

This film is subtle but frank, explores sexuality in an open and honest way exploring themes relevant to our time: the biological and the ethical side of human life, the determinist way of viewing our sexuality and gender, the ways in which we define our selves in a time with shifting mores, the chance of love in a society with few if any boundaries. Love affairs as demonstrated between Hanna and Simon, Hanna and Adam, and Simon and Adam are treated equally and sensitively.

The three primary actors are excellent as is the entire cast. The cinematography and film manipulation by Frank Griebe (with Twyker) and the musical score Reinhold Heil, Johnny Klimek, Gabriel Isaac Mounsey, and Tom Tykwer (with a little help form Debussy and others!) is splendid. This is a first class film and deserves the attention of a very wide audience. It is likely to be one of those films that grows in stature with the passage of time.

Grady Harp

It is obvious that Hanna and Simon, as a couple, have reached the steady state of true love, a deep true love. But it is a steady state... probably too steady. So when each other, separately, meets the handsome Adam, they re-discover passion.

It is a slow movie as we have to discover how the characters are feeling lonely without actually expressing it. Hanna and Simon are a couple but they feel lonely each other. They both meet Adam, on different circumstances, and feel attracted to him. It is true that Adam has everything for him: he is good-looking, he practices some sports, go out, have casual sex... but at the end of the day, he is still lonely. As a proof, his apartment looks like a hospital room.

This movie is about joining each other's loneliness to build a true relationship. But how does it happen? That is the interesting part.

Tom Tykwer has come of age as a director with this film, and has dropped his sparkling visual flair in favor of straightforward yet sophisticated storytelling. His camera and editing are spot-on yet smart, as he carefully weaves a layered tale of two lost adults who rediscover and remake themselves through their relationship with another man.

His nuanced trio of characters deliberately play against gender types: Simon, the husband, is passive, quiet, artistic, and metaphorically female; Hanna, the wife, is assertive, successful, opinionated, and symbolically male; Adam, their paramour, a fertilization specialist who "brings life" to their dull routine, has both male and female sides.

The way their lives intertwine is both surprising and entertaining, and Tykwer not only explores their raw cores of emotional and physical need, but deftly and expertly exposes the humor in Hanna and Simon's awkward fumbling for new purpose.

What Woody Allen does for New York, Tykwer does for Berlin, showcasing the city as a vibrant center of art, culture, and yes, sexuality, filled with creative inhabitants who have gone there to remake themselves.

His intermittent visual collages of the character's lives inject new vitality to the stale montages we've all seen a million times; it's not that the screen has never been subdivided this way before, but that Tykwer's method of visual construction is meticulous and succinct -- like every frame of this film.

The result is an engaging, truthful, and non-traditional romance that leaves you feeling hopeful that love can tear down our seemingly permanent walls; yet another reason to set it in Berlin!

Highly recommended.

An extremely playful and sensitive, a very funny and very political movie. The story of a couple falling in love with the same man serves as a surface to discuss fundamental themes of our time: the biological and the ethical side of human life, the determinist way we still see our sexuality and gender, the ways in which we define our selves in a time with shifting foundations, the chance of love in a society with almost no boundaries. The extraordinary performance of the three main characters meet a style of directing that is not afraid of unconventional ideas, like for example a metaphorical dance scene in a white space by Sasha Walz in the beginning or a short scene of a sundown with funny music, which seams completely out of context, but is instantly commented with a laughter in the audience. But aside from being entertaining and intelligent, it also invokes a kind of sexual utopia: it encourages us, to see our sexuality, our love, our gender and ourselves in a more tolerant, open and free way.

This is, without a doubt, the best German movie i have seen in years.

Tom Tykwer maybe started the new German film wonder by "Run, Lola run". He loves to hate mondaine Berlin people. Here is the couple fits into all descriptions. She's the anchor of philosophy TV show. He's the owner of a contemporary art promotion business.

Not being aware of it, they meet the same man, who seduces them both. They both get ridiculous, without being aware of that either. But the passions seem real, through all broken perfection.

So we can laugh at Berlin, but does that matter? For a while perhaps, but not after leaving the theater. And maybe that's what Tom Tykwer wants.