Europe, She Loves

Very interesting to see the dynamics and ways of interaction in different relationships and to see new ways to communicate or find similarities to your life and relationships.

Some shots of the cities and landscapes are beautiful and the editing works extremely well.

It's impressive how natural the people behave while being filmed and at first I wasn't sure if the scenes were real or acted out because of the intimacy combined with the closeness of the camera(s) and crew.

Very well executed idea by Jan Gassman + team, gives one the feeling to really look into other people's relationships & lives. Respect to those people who were so open to being vulnerable and honest in front of the camera.

What I see as improvable would be the length of the film. "Europe, she loves" is intimate but lacks the suspense or clear direction of the relationships to maintain the viewer's attention until the end. If the film would have been just 15 minutes shorter it would have been much more compact. Yes, the scenes alone all have some unique qualities but for the greater sake of the film it would have been better to sacrifice certain parts.

I read in other reviews that it is not "feel-good" or "entertaining". It really depends on your taste: if you like art-house and films, that make you reflect about yourself and your life and you like the trailer I would say: go for it.

Described as a documentary but filmed like a feature film in which the 'actors' seem to be playing variations of themselves, Jan Gassmann's "Europe, she loves" is a virtually plot less look at the lives of four couples in four European cities. Judging by the fairly explicit sex scenes it is unlikely it can be described as pure documentary; everything is obviously staged. It's also not very interesting. Fundamentally we all seem to live very boring lives in which nothing very much happens. If there is a thread running through the picture it's economic deprivation. Gassmann's protagonists definitely come from the lower end of the economic spectrum and since he doesn't picture them in any kind of positive light the film feels more than vaguely like exploitation. It's certainly of its time so it is naturally depressingly prescient. It's most definitely the antithesis of feel-good.