I sat last week and observed the movie-trailer of a new 'flick' entitled "Berlin, I Love You". You can go and view the 2-minute clip over at YouTube.
What my impression is.....it's an artsy Brit-American production, with a combination of British, American and German theatrical people, with the landscape of Berlin in the background. The basic story? Based on the 2-minute clip? I'd suggest that around every single corner....there's some mad British gal ready to fall head over heels with some guy she meets at a cafe or pub. It appears to be a dozen-odd people who fit into various little short Berlin-love stories.
The problem with these type of movies....is that people sit there in Wales, or Chicago, or Seattle....getting this feeling that Berlin has all this 'love-power' and you get some element of raw emotion walking down along the river, sipping a beer, and finding some hot lusty Berlin guy or gal. So they get charged up....buy round-trip tickets to Berlin for two weeks, and generally find that it's a pretty wicked city, varying amounts of crime, drunken or drug-laced behavior, and everyone seeming to chat over the 'evil-Trump'.
I noticed this morning that Deutsche Welle got into the criticism over the movie. The thing is....the movie hasn't been released yet.....just the trailer (2 minutes of value) was released. So the criticism is based strictly on a trailer at this point.
Over the decades, I've been to most of the major German cities, and frankly....I just don't see that 'romantic' feeling about these cities. Landscape-wise, there's a lot of bold architecture and history. There's innovation going on (bike trails, sky-towers, city-parks). There's drug-infested areas. There's massive movement of people in rush-hours. There's great crowd of Chinese tourists trying to get a brief 8-hour feel for German metropolitan living. And food, beer and wine seem to be high priority.
Maybe the thrill for 'Berlin, I Love You' will recover as the movie actually arrives. Heck, maybe it'll hype some theme where every year another movie will be made (Hamburg, I Love You.....Stuttgart, I Love You.....Bremen, I Love You....even Dresden, I Love You).
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