Les nouveaux mecs

`Maybe, Maybe Not' is one of the most odd movies I've ever seen. I liked it. I think I liked it because it is so completely different than all the American movies I'm used to seeing. In the beginning, the main character, Axel, decides to randomly have sex with some girl in the bathroom of his workplace. A woman in the next stall recognizes the key chain that dropped from one of the fornicating couple's clothes. She peeks over the stall to find her boyfriend of three years mindlessly humping another woman. She kicks him out of their apartment and throughout the rest of the movie he struggles with where to live. Initially he calls old girlfriends who all readily turn him away. Then he ends up at a `men's group' with a lot of gay guys. After that, he gets drunk at a party and goes home to sleep at one of their houses. This is when the gender preference battle begins. A lot of stereotypes were defied in this movie and I found that extremely refreshing. For example, it is commonly thought in American society that gay men are promiscuous, however in this movie, no homosexual sex is shown. There is one man-to-man kiss in the club and in another scene homosexual activity is inferred while watching slides but not directly shown on the screen. There are, however, two comparatively graphic heterosexual scenes. Another stereotype defied was the `effeminate gay men' stereotype. The main gay character, Norbert, didn't act effeminate at all, not even in drag. My favorite part of the movie however perpetuated and made fun of an existing stereotype - the stupid Stallone-loving straight guy. The guys in the movie theater were very intriguing. I thought they added welcome comic relief to an otherwise tense and dark movie.

I thought it was fine. Not exactly deep stuff, but entertaining. Everything must be taken in context, if possible, and this was based on a popular comic strip by Ralf Koenig -- I'm guessing he's gay, based on other stuff I've seen of his, so whether his work perpetuates stereotypes or is the honest humor of a member of the gay community is not so easy to say. Not for me, anyway. I found Germany in the mid-1990s to be more tolerant of homosexuals than my hometown in Amerika, but a lot has changed in the intervening years. Anyway, political incorrectness aside, I think of this as a light comedy about relationships, like another Soenke Wortmann films I've seen [Stadtgespraech]. For students of the German language, it was a wonderful opportunity to catch some slang and modern, conversational German that we don't see in deep, intellectual films based on historical or literary sources.

There is only one reason to watch this film: sexy Til Schweiger. He has beauty and magnetism, besides being an extraordinary young actor with subtlety, understated power, and depth. Unfortunately, these qualities are all but lost in this heavy-handed comedy. It is beautifully shot but, considering its comedic intent, rather darkly so. The story and its underlying principles leave much to be desired.

Handsome Axel (Schweiger) works in a 30's-style supper club, presumably to remind us of the wacky social farces of that period. Any illusions on that score end, however, when he gallantly accompanies an inviting woman into the bathroom for a quickie. His girlfriend Doro, in the next stall, informs him that they're through. Axel is a very pretty boy but, looking for a place to stay, he is rebuffed with varying degrees of vehemence by former girlfriends all too familiar with his womanizing. Alas, Axel's unfortunate coitus interruptus is the inauspicious high point of the movie, with the opening credits barely over.

Axel is adopted by a group of 'thoughtful' gay men in his hour of need. Norbert, a middle-aged nebbish, gives him a place to stay in hopes that there is a 'maybe'. What ensues is a series of awkward and tasteless gags, mostly involving Axel's discomfort being around gays. Stereotypes abound, and no one comes off particularly well. The straight men are dorky, unattractive, and strangely mortified by the use of common euphemisms for breasts. The gay men are selfish, unattractive, and impossibly flamboyant (in case we miss the point). Doro is shrill, intolerant, and controlling. Axel is shallow, thoughtless, and virtually monosyllabic, but adorable .

When Axel speaks of 'us normal men' we know where the film stands politically. The gay men appear in female attire much of the time, but speak in caricatured bass voices (in case we miss the point). Axel is deeply offended when cruised by a gay man in a gay disco; especially surprising as he asked the man for a light and directions to the bathroom, while hot, sweaty, and very sexy in a tight muscle shirt. 'Nuff said.

The plot thickens – and so does the humor – when Doro finds that she is pregnant and decides to get Axel back. She finds him in her own bed with unsightly Norbert, disturbingly naked, in the middle of a very inept seduction. Despite this awkward reunion, Axel and Doro get married. Axel unceremoniously drops Norbert because his wife is 'allergic to gays' .

The downward spiral continues unabated. Norbert, a strict vegetarian, hooks up with a repellent and humorless butcher, about whom the best one can say is that he has shaved every inch of his gross body. Axel cheats on Doro yet again, with a woman whose animal stimulants put him a coma. We finally hit rock bottom when Doro is bitch-slapped during one last bout of hysteria, and goes into labor. This is funny?

Til Schweiger is scrumptious eye-candy, and looks stunning throughout the film in tight t-shirts, muscle shirts, open shirts, no shirt. Thank heavens for small mercies. But, in one unfortunate aesthetic choice after another, the odious older men appear in greater states of undress more often than the exquisite young man who makes this peculiar move worth watching.

The ending has a nice feeling and suggests some reconciliation between Norbert and Axel. It's way too little, too late.

I saw this film in Germany when it came out as I was living there at the time. It was one of the funniest films I ever saw. Some years later I got a subtitled copy back in England and was shocked at how unfunny it was when translated. Which goes to show that humour often only works in the language it was created in.

That said, it is still a very unstylised view of culture clashes and a study of how far people are prepared to go when they aren't getting any sex. No one gets what they want by the end: the gay man doesn't get his straight friend; the straight man doesn't get his free-love lifestyle; the straight woman doesn't get her angry singledom.

I guess the moral is that you can take the human out of their sexuality, but you can't take the sexuality out of the human. Trite, but it reflects the title of the film, referring to a proverbial fish out of water.

Ok where to start.. Well I hate American movies, and when they make comedies there's no soul to it, merely funny events which happen to be funny only for Americans. But this movie has its deep side too, like most European movies. Norbert's "rough" boyfriend, the incident with Axel and his former classmate, and the rough boyfriend doing the girl in the bathtub while Axel stands frozen like a fly.. That scene was absolutely priceless.

As for the casting, Katja Riemann is not only beautiful as a goddess, she's also an awesome actress. It's so surprising that she doesn't have the fame she deserves. Or maybe not, considering how many copies of DVD's boring Hollywood movies sell... Each time the word "gay" comes up in this movie, her gestures and facial expressions are outstandingly flawless. Even if you start watching the movie after the 40th minute and start from a scene with that word, you'd perfectly understand she's sick of homosexuality. Joachim Krol and Til Schweiger are also performing great here. I actually thought Joachim Krol was gay in real life after watching the movie. Well I don't have any evidence about his sexuality, but chances are he's not.

My German is quite rusty and I still loved this movie. I'm sure I would like it even more if I understood the dialogues perfectly. So go and watch this movie, and shoot me if you don't like it. A little note, the main characters of this movie can be classified as eye candy. Katja Riemann is beautiful, and Til Schweiger is handsome. And with their acting skills, the movie becomes a delicious pastime.