Everyone Else

A young German couple is on a business/vacation trip in Sardinia. They don't much like each other. They pretty much argue and snipe at each other constantly. They probably, in fact, should just get a divorce. Oh, wait: they're not married. So why the Hell are they even together? These two people just need to move the Hell on. The film really does understand its characters quite intimately, and the lead actors (Birgit Minichmayr and Lars Eidinger) are good, but so what? These people are just not worth caring about or observing in any way whatsoever. The movie moves very slowly and is basically the equivalent of hanging out with horrible people for a very, very long two hours. Terrible.

The thinking is too obvious. Get a couple of well built people to talk for two hours, with some (uninspiring) nudity thrown in and no one has to find too much money to produce something that looks like a movie. There are so many film festivals, one of them is bound to play it.

Fraulein Minichmayr is lively enough and she's been in some real films (Downfall, Perfume)so her first scene with the little girl holds hope - "Tell me why you think I'm so awful." Co star Eidinger as an architect offers a chance for some comment on taste and style which fail to impress.

Production values are in the competent unimpressive bracket.

It was the end of the Sydney Film Festival but this was not the movie to offer an audience which had just been blackjacked with the ridiculous Ming-liang Tsai VISAGE. Have they no mercy? Even film festival subscribers deserve pity.

'EVERYONE ELSE': Two Stars (Out of Five)

One of the most critically praised movies of the year which goes to show critic's approval doesn't always mean anything. The film tells the story of an unhappily married couple on a Mediterranean vacation. There's really not much else to it. It's a German film, with English subtitles, and it's written and directed by Maren Ade. It stars Birgit Minichmayr and Lars Eidinger as the couple.

Minichmayr plays Gitti and Eidinger plays Chris and as the movie opens they appear to be a happily married couple. As the movie progresses we get to slowly know the couple and how they relate to each other. We gradually see the cracks in their relationship as they grow bigger and bigger. In the end do we really care enough about these characters to really care if things work out between the two? I say no.

The movie is well acted and for what it attempts to do I think it's well made to a certain extent. I just don't admire what it attempts to do very much. It wants us to see what an average couple goes through in good times and bad and see what drives them apart and what keeps them together. I think they portrayed a believable average couple realistically, it's just not the type of couple I'd care to spend much time with. That's what the movie is like, spending a lot of time with an annoying bickering couple. For me that's hard to watch and pointless. I can go hang out with some of my friends if I want to see that. Other than living the painful realities of a painful relationship the movie has nothing else of any value to offer. There's nothing learned here and certainly nothing witnessed of any entertainment value. The movie just doesn't work.

Watch our review show 'MOVIE TALK' at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-m3RUjISnYI

great actors, smart dialogs and a very precise observations of a young professional society in Germany. one of the best German films in a long time made by a director who knows how to direct great actors. people who like theatre will love this movie. when i went to this movie i expected a German version of a french movie from directors like francois ozon. i also expected it to be a typical movie made from a woman for women. still i expected a lot because the actors count to the best ones of German theatre. the movie did not turn out the way i expected it. the questions it raises about creative achievers who want to stay independent, free and young are shameless and razor sharp. every scene is observed very precisely without seeming to be constructed. gitty (birgit minichmayr) might not be as strong as many might hope but she never looses the main focus of this movie: authenticity

Similar in style and tone to last year's "Blue Valentine," the German film "Everyone Else" provides us with an oblique look at a troubled relationship. Though the couple in this film does not seem as overtly unhappy as the one in the American work, there is still something clearly eating away at their relationship. The most admirable aspect of the screenplay by Maren Ade is that it doesn't throw easy labels onto either the characters or the problems they're facing. The movie is really more a piece of objective reportage chronicling their lives over the course of a few days than a plot- and theme-driven narrative leading us to a preordained conclusion about them as people.

Chris (Lars Eidinger) is a gifted but apparently not very successful architect, while Gitti (Birgit Minichmayr), his girlfriend, who works in the recording business, seems to be generally supportive of his efforts. Chris and Gitti are spending a relaxing vacation at his mother's home on the Mediterranean, when Gitti begins to off-handedly question Chris's masculinity (we assume that it has more to do with his lack of initiative and drive than with his personal mannerisms). In response, Chris begins to treat Gitti in an ever more callous fashion, trying to prove her wrong by acting in the dismissive and domineering way he assumes "real" men do, and in the way, if Gitta is any indication, women apparently want them to.

But this synopsis really only covers the tip of the iceberg, for there are clearly many more complex dynamics taking place within this relationship that are not so easily delineated and described. Suffice it to say that the movie explores the myriad elements that go into relationships, and does so without spelling them out in simplistic terms and without passing judgment on the characters. The parameters within which any relationship must be set are still evolving and fluid in the case of Chris and Gitti, and this leads to much pushing of the boundaries and behavioral experimentation on the part of the couple throughout the course of the film. Ade's direction is unobtrusive and observational in nature, which allows the actors to interact with one another in a quasi-improvisational and thus wholly believable fashion.

There is, however, a definite downside to this type of storytelling – "Blue Valentine" suffered from it as well – and that is that the motivations for the characters' actions are often so murky and inexplicable that they can seem downright arbitrary to those of us who are watching all of this unfold from the outside in. That's why Chris and Gitti strike us as being more weird and annoying – if not downright daffy - than anything else at times.

Thus, your initial response might be to assume that perhaps Chris and Gitti simply aren't meant for one another and that they might think about looking elsewhere for a relationship. But, then again, if it were that easy to get out of a troubled relationship, we'd have no need in the first place for films like "Everyone Else."