Love Steaks

Love Steaks finds the timid and awkward Clemens (Franz Rogowski) starting a new job as a massage therapist and reiki trainee at a luxury hotel in a German-speaking country. While he learns the ropes amid the stringent attitude of the hotel, Lara (Lana Cooper), a blonde host mess who works in the kitchens, takes pulls of the cooking wine with the other cooks and participates in devil-may-care hijinks that earns her several talkings-to from her superior chef. Once the kitchen discovers Clemens and begins to pick on him, Lara begins to crush on him amid her alcoholism, and when he finds her passed out on a beach and massages her gluts, the two initiate a clandestine but reckless romance. Lara's wildfire personality and Clemens' calm yet unsure demeanor culminate in some charming, cutesy scenes ensconced in the depressive atmosphere of the hotel, with polished production that underpins the sterile and authoritarian nature of their work residency. As Clemens pushes Lara to overcome her alcoholism, though, it adds onto the pressure she feels from the hotel authorities and her fellow cooks (who make fun of her and Clemens' cleft palate scars and appearance), fermenting instability. Rogowski exhibits fine acting with a naturally distinctive way of speaking, and drives his character home. Although the film ends in a somewhat unexpected upheaval, Love Steaks relies too heavily on the characterization of the two protagonists in their environment, and the narrative aspect comes to a bit of an unsatisfying standstill, seemingly unfinished. It's not a stinker by any means, but it left me wanting more.

I see people weight it like a boring film, but I think it is not a boring film. I liked the fragment per fragment like narrative and mostly enjoyed the film because of it's dynamic style of storytelling. Need to mention that the way characters are uncovered for the viewer is good directorial decision and I liked the film visually as well. Unfortunately I also see, that the stylistic approach of director is not a purely defined and original. The story itself is not a very interesting one for me, however the details (and some scenes) were engaging.

To conclude: 7/10 in its league. Not in open competition. It is shot with 100k under the Babelsberg film school.

Summary

A special love story, crossed by the work environment in which it takes place, which knows how to combine an almost documentary or reality imprint with others that are particularly poetic.

Review

Lara and Clemens (Lana Cooper and Franz Rogowski) are two probationers at a luxurious spa hotel on the Baltic. She as a kitchen helper and he as a physiotherapist. Over time, a special bond will emerge between the two.

This Jakob Lass film could be defined as a particular love story between two totally opposite beings to which picaresque elements are added, due to the way in which Rogowski's character confronts some of the women in the story. Clemens is rather shy, respectful of hierarchies and interested in his work. Lara is impulsive, irreverent, perhaps in this job not by choice and with alcohol problems. As they bond, she is the one in control, making it a series of challenges for Clemens. They are two opposite poles that somehow attract and need each other.

But in the film by Lass (also a co-writer), just as important as the relationship itself is its setting. The power dynamic between Lara and Clemens is part of broader ones corresponding to the workplace, where the interference of managers, colleagues and clients is forcefully felt. On the other hand, the kitchen and the physiotherapy and massage sector could not be more different, a contrast very well marked by the film, although a sequence marks a comical parallelism in part related to the title of the film. It is interesting to compare how both behave inside the hotel and outside it, in that landscape of cold Baltic screens.

Apparently, the only professional actors in the film are the ones that make up the leading couple, while the rest are made up of real hotel staff. This contributes to the imprint at times dry and almost documentary (or reality) of a film that contrasts with others of strange poetry focused on the leading couple.

Cooper achieves with his difficult character all the nuances so as not to hate her and even love her, while Franz Rogowski (later an acclaimed actor in Transit, Undine and Great Freedom) perfectly embodies the naive, slightly angelic and sensitive young man necessary for any story in part picaresque, but at the same time not fully aware or believed in his charm and sensuality and what they provoke.

This should have been an easy movie to like: coworkers discover romance while fighting their personal demons. And it feels weird and wrong to cry, "Too much realism!" But that was the problem, for me. Sous-chef Lara is a likeable person, when she isn't drinking. When she drinks, I'm reminded why I avoid alcoholics and other addicts like the plague - they're just unbearable to be around... and to watch. The acting was so good I couldn't stand it, on a par with Ben Gazzara in "Tales of Ordinary Madness" (Italy/France, 1981). And it doesn't help that she works with a bunch of only nominally adult jackasses in a kitchen where the noise never ceases.

Masseur Clemens is portrayed annoyingly well, too. When his #HimToo moment occurs, he reacts with neither extreme of "hot diggety" nor "get the hell out until you can behave". Instead, he dithers, uncertain and insecure. And he continues to dither through much of the movie, although who can blame him when the object of his affection is a boozehound? The resulting plot is just a little too real-time, like a novel that hasn't had its first edit.

It's difficult to enjoy a romance movie when you don't feel much affinity or affection for the characters. Building that affinity would require prologue, I think. It's not a bad film, but it could be better.

It is a very strange dance these two fine young actors do.. you never know quite where it is going.. and you find it hard to take your eyes off them. The audience for such a film will be very small, it is as far from any mainstream film as one can find. But with many such films they can drift off into unwatchable territory, and although this production time and again flirts with going over the edge, each time it returns to keep us involved. And when it's all over, you're not entirely sure what you have witnessed, but feel as though it was worth your time spent.