In den Tag hinein

This is a German movie about a young girl living meeting a Japanese student and falling in love. They live in a big city (I'd guess Berlin) and ride around on their bikes drinking beer and booze. That's actually all there is to the plot, although not all there is to the movie. This movie is unfortunately a little too thin. On one hand, it features good actors and tells the story almost without dialogue - an art few directors practice these days. The Japanese student sucks at German, so the two lovebirds don't really speak much to each other, but still they communicate, and that's what's so interesting to see. But then on the other hand, the movie's very slow. Almost every scene is drawn out, and I don't really understand why. In my opinion, it just stretches the movie out too much. Since there is very little dialogue and no story, all these long scenes often get tedious and boring. This is an honorable attempt to make a really good movie, but I'm not impressed.

I would not have guessed that silence in a movie (in every bit of it) could be so beautiful, effective and shocking. In every scene, camera angle, dialog have its own purity and genius, thanks to Maria Speth... I must add that artistic work and cinematography of In Den Tag Hinein is the most beautiful I've ever seen yet, thanks to Reinhold Vorschneider...

The lead characters (Lynn and Koji) have their own uncomfortable situations in their lives and getting together helps their communication and lives (to complete absences) easier on a different level...

The uncertainty of the ending, Koji's feelings (regret, remorse or blues whatever you want to call it) makes the audience curios about aftershock of Lynn character.

A film that takes its time to tell an incredibly sad and beautiful love story. Lynn is torn between her unresponsive boyfriend and a Japanese student. The acting is excellent and every scene feels genuine, with all the clumsiness and subtle

details of real life. To some it may seem slow, but the atmosphere that is

gradually built up throughout the film culminates in one of the most beautiful endings I have ever seen.

The film being too slow, as said before me, never bothered me. I liked the pace of the movie and the silence. Actually, most scenes were powerful because nothing was said at all. Had there been more dialogue, the internal struggling by the main characters might have been less visible, obscured by words. This is what a good movie is about, in my opinion: seeing and feeling what goes on in people's minds, what they individually long for and what their expectations of 'the other' are. How people do not meet up to expectations and the difficulty of relations between them is the basis for so many movies, but a viable one. Set against the background of an unpersonal, artificial urban environment somewhere in the '00s, a sense of aimlesness and alianation lies underneath it all. I love the atmosphere, an after-summer Berlin evening; nice camera work. Moving.

This film takes place in Berlin, which is one of my favourite cities. In Den Tag Hinein succeeds in capturing the essence of loneliness in relationships, and has great performances by the young woman playing lead, Lynn, and the Japanese guy. The love story reminds me a bit of Coppola's Lost in Translation, but this is a bit more poignant. The silence in the scenes emphasis's the overall feeling. I hope Speth makes more films.

Some people don't apparently like the slow story-telling of Speth, but I really loved the atmospheric scenes and the uncertainty of small issues. There's nothing false here. Great camera work.