This is a great film, there is no boring moment and all the actors are doing a wonderful job, especially Jürgen. In the second half of the film, after Holger has fallen for Janis, there are four scenes in which he talks to his wife under different circumstances, which I think are incredibly well done. In particular the one, where Holger actually sits on Janis' bed, when Simone confronts him. He decides to stay with Janis but you can see on his face, that he knows exactly, that this is the wrong decision but he can't help it. The end is a bit too melodramatic for a film, that tries to be realistic and also claims, to be based on real happenings.
Although I think it is a well made film, I'm not happy with the "message" it gives, that gay people destroy family life. This could just as well have been a story about an older family man, who gets a bee in the bonnet about a young girl and can't extricate himself from this obsession. I'm not too familiar with the gay scene, but from what I hear, I don't think it is that dreary and brutal, there are partnerships too and not everybody sells himself. Jürgen's older gay film Die Konsequenz, which didn't exactly have a happy-end either, still has a warmer feeling to it than this one.
I did love that movie but I'm going to find it difficult to write about. I think the language barrier was a bigger problem here than with the others so far. The one thing that most jumped out at me was Jürgen's fantastic, fantastic performance. All the actors were superb. He had one tough role, though, playing a family man who gets hit with a midlife crisis in THAT form... and is as baffled by it as anybody else, but just can't step away from it. That kid was so no-good for him that it's awfully tempting just to call Holger a schmuck-and-a-half and have done with it. Well, really, Holger was a schmuck. SCHMUCK, to get mixed up with that sleazy lowlife boy! But he knows he's a schmuck... he knows it the whole time... and watching this, I could do nothing but feel terribly sorry for him, wanting to put the brakes on at every moment and just somehow not having the control to do it.
I would imagine this movie tends to invoke two basic reactions in viewers: 1. geez, whatta dimbulb - he was asking for it, or 2. oh, my god, that poor, poor man! And I would hope that most people would have reaction #2, as I did... otherwise they must have missed out seeing what Jürgen does in this film. This is a 100% perfect performance. A breathtaking, spot-on, nailed-it, masterful-craftsmanship, tears-in-the-eyes, 12-course-meal-with-a-mint, totally kick-ass PERFECT performance... and of all the Jürgen movies I've seen, this is the film I would now point to first if I had to prove to anybody that he is utterly brilliant. (At least, I would if the thing were available on this side of the pond! Am I supposed to be cussing out the Americans or the Germans about this? I live in the States, so lemme blame the Americans for not having these movies over here in every store and video-rental shop in the nation, even if they are in German: DAMN YOU.)
Now, where was I? Oh, yeah... whatever anybody else may think about the movie, I maintain that anyone who says Jürgen's performance in SCHREI DER LIEBE is not the best thing since the discovery of fire should be run over with four cars and an army tank.
Speaking of which, this is the second really terrific movie I've seen Jürgen in that, after an hour and a half of superior material, was rather spoiled by a dumb ending. This was based on a true story? Ordinarily I'm opposed to taking liberties with true stories in film versions but if they didn't make up that ending, maybe they should have made up something else. It really doesn't sit well onscreen. (Sorry, Mr. Holger, wherever you are.) I didn't realize it was true before I watched it, though - and looking at it JUST as a movie, I did find the conclusion troublesome; it simply looks like a bad ending. Part of that, though, was all those people standing around looking at poor Holger with no reaction. Probably that was meant to convey shock, but it looked like everybody he'd ever loved just abandoned him and couldn't even have the decency to cry or speak to him or hold him or SOMETHING just so he wouldn't spend his last moment on earth in utter alienation from any human compassion. They just stand there and stare like a bunch of cows, and that made me rather angry, really.
I can see that someone might get the "message" that gays destroy family life, but that's not what I would have taken away from this. I don't think it was meant to be some sort of expose on the gay community - and if that was part of the intention, they failed miserably, in my opinion. I saw it as a character study of very specific individuals; and yes, a similar story could have been done with a heterosexual relationship instead, but not with the same punch that this packed. With a heterosexual affair you'd be missing a lot of the what-the-hell-are-you-doing (what-the-hell-am-I-doing) aspect, which I feel is critical. Holger and his family would still have been baffled and stunned, but there's a built-in level of understanding there: middle-aged men leave their wives for young women all the time. The parties involved surely wonder how it could happen to them, but they probably don't wonder how it could happen, period. Everybody's seen that before.
It's not so usual for somebody to start experimenting with homosexuality for the first time at that age - and an obviously well settled, well-adjusted (up until that point, anyway!) and happily-married family man, at that. The fact that it's a boy who gets to him rather than a girl makes it an atomic bomb instead of a grenade. I think they could all have recovered from a "regular" affair, but once you cross this particular line and get caught at it, well... you know it really can't ever be the same again, forgiveness notwithstanding.