Un jour, nous nous raconterons tout

A dirty and old(ish), somewhat unattractive brute starts advancing on the local 17 year old beauty. Unfortunately for everybody, he gives off a major rapey vibe. Their first meeting is literally him groping her without consent.

Since her boyfriend is very goofy, she eventually gives in to the brute and allows him to take her very roughly and a borderline sexually abusive affair ensues.

It's a German movie, so this counts as a romantic comedy.

The lack of diversity is fine. This is set in early 90's East Germany and people of colour and the disabled obviously hadn't been invented yet.

The cinematographer needs a big raise though.

No pun intended - mixing two or rather even three titles into one summary thing. Well you know me - maybe. If you have read some of my reviews. This being a german movie, I did use the term "ossi" which is how germans that are from west Germany used to call people who were from east Germany. Wessi would be the other way around - so we got both.

That being said, the title I sort of took here as inspiration is from the movie Rebel without a cause. In Germany the movie is called "denn sie wissen nicht was sie tun" - because they do not know what they do. Which is also something from the bible. Both applicable to the movie - and that's why I mixed them and used it. Funnily enough, because I had forgotten the title of the movie, I ordered the ticket at my cinema under the german title of the James Dean movie.

Back to the movie at hand though. It may seem and/or feel that the movie has no purpose. No goal for the characters ... well maybe growing up. But especially from the beginning, we do not know what our main character wants ... she lives in the now united Germany ... not that you can feel a lot of it ... and it is not about that overall. It is about her and her story.

That said, the aftermath of the inclusion is being made a topic from time to time. And while this is happening in the background, our main character has an awakening ... a sexual and love awakening. Which means you will be getting quite a lot of nudity ... be aware of that ... it should not bother you. Sometimes it may make you uncomfortable ... long pauses, where you can feel the sensuality ... you can feel an outburst is coming any minute/second ... which is not easy or comfortable for some, especially when watching it with others (in a cinema for example).

A lolita kind of story - embeded in a historical context then. Although as we learn later not exactly lolita. While I was certain the actress was older (22 or 23 I think at the time of shooting), it is never clear how old her character is supposed to be. Which makes her ... sexual life even more ... well weird I reckon. Again, depending on your sensibilities. Towards the end we learn she was 18 at the beginning of the movie - so all legal ... the drama surrounding her ... well there does not seem to be an easy way out ... and I guess in the end there isn't one - at least not without someone losing their mind/head ...

... a twenty-something Marlene Burow is the only reason watching this quickly-gets-to-being-boring movie... a seemingly-intelligent-teenager being attracted to abusive-sex with a forty-year-old farmer is a far stretch... a dramatic ending relieves viewers of all nonsensical-possibilities

... when watching a beautiful young woman having sex gets boring, you know the film has lost it's core-interest.. all the East-West reunification symbolism gets gibberished... it's a film that wants viewers to think more about other things, but then directs them to sex-scenes again and again... well made, just not-well-written-directed.

In the shimmering summer of 1990, two German states still existed. The WÄHRUNGSUNION (monetary union) has just been completed, and it should still be three months before the WIEDERVEREINIGUNG (reunification). 18-year-old Maria (Marlene BUROW) lives with her boyfriend of the same age on his parents farm, somewhere in the Thuringian countryside. Life there still seems very archaic, like it might have been in the 1950s. Maria lives for the day, skips school and reads THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV. The relationship with her mother (Jördis TRIEBEL), who lives in the neighboring village, seems to be somewhat clouded. Only the encounter with 40-year-old Henner (Felix KRAMER), who lives alone on a neighboring farm, breaks Maria out of her lethargy. It is the beginning of a passionate amour fou that crosses many boundaries. The taciturn yet charismatic man reveals an irritating mix of vulnerability and brutality to which Maria feels magically drawn. Disappointed certainties of life and the premonition of coming changes erupt into intoxicating sexuality...

The impressive film by director Emily ATEF (born 1973), based on Daniela KRIENs (born 1975) bestseller of the same name (published in 2011), paints an apt portrait of this very special summer. The shimmering heat of 1990, the overarching upheaval and the reversal of all previous certainties are brought to the big screen in a congenial and powerful way.

This film is a great artistic achievement, and not just for the otherwise often lifeless German-speaking cinema! A masterpiece created under the Thuringian sun that can tell a lot about German-German spiritual landscapes!

An achingly beautiful tale of a young woman torn between two lovers. She finds in each what the other doesn't provide. Gorgeous cinematography, top notch acting. And authentically captures the emotional seesaw of being a young adult, wanting safety/security but also wanting to explore the new and different.

It's nothing new but it is exceptionally well done. It takes place in rural East Germany, just at the time of reunification. Maybe that's symbolic, as life is about to change drastically but in the moment, the East was still 40 years behind West Germany.

I have not read the source novel, so I cannot compare-contrast the film to book.