Presumably you could easily take these people seriously if they did not look so stupid. Karoline Herfurth pulls her famous Herzschmerzschnute in the warmest dim light and lets tears roll over her pale cheeks. Jella Haase wears her hair as if scrubbed by the designer. And when Frederick Lau, Germany's most popular movie outlet since Heintje, blinks his eyes, then his teeth are flashing like in a toothpaste spot.
Bora Dagtekins movie "The Perfect Secret" looks as homey and pretty as a TV commercial from the first to the last of over 110 minutes. And yet I would like to explore the strangest, ugliest sides of modern boy-skeptic life.
photo gallery
8 pictures
"The Perfect Secret": An educational film as a comedy"The Perfect Secret" is an often very funny comedy. The film is based on the idea first tried out in an Italian cinema drama from the year 2016 that a dinner party of three and a half friendly couples puts all mobile phones on the table and receives every call, text or picture message in the collective.
The smartphones are the "black boxers of our lives," says Jessica Schwarz played psychotherapist Eva at the beginning of the film. Apparently she not only submits to her husband Rocco (Wotan Wilke Möhring), whom she recently finds "penetratingly cheerful", that on his mobile device could find evidence of fraudulent and embarrassing undertakings.
The men of the star ensemble Dagtekin has assembled for his film have allegedly been friends since childhood. Rocco works as a cosmetic surgeon, Pepe (Florian David Fitz) as a teacher, Leo (Elyas M'Barek, read here a portrait of the most successful German actor) is a life-time artist and Simon (Lau) is a taxi driver. Karoline Herfurth's Carlotta is the wife of Leo and a successful advertiser. Jella Haases Bianca is fresh together with Simon and animal homeopath.
Astonishment and shy faces
The first - consistently unsavory - dishes are served, while outside announces a lunar eclipse outside the balcony window. The first calls and messages make for amazement and shy faces. The moment in which the table society is shaking the fact that just wanted to undergo a breast embellishment surgery Eva, is not only because of the stupid writer's tale, but also because of the uninhibited grimace of the actors a low point of the film.
From then on, the director Dagtekin always succeeds in creating beautiful moments, because he cares less about the (mostly sexual) needs and secrecies of those involved, but more about the disappointment that results from the little lies among friends and love partners. The men at the dining table communicate only disturbed or not at all, their memory of the childhood time has gotten rid of the rumination of the eternally same anecdotes.
The women are also speechless and jammed when it comes to work and parenting and finally the question of whether one of their fellows is gay. Even on the image of women in this movie you will argue funny. But even more about the homophobia, which pops up suddenly at the dining table like popcorn in a saucepan.
Amazing didactic intentions and amusing effect
Homophobia - as in the Italian original and in the French version of the material, "Nothing to hide" - suddenly becomes the big topic of the film. One can reproach Dagtekin's comedy that for a long time it merrily depicts the mendacity of the people who speak of "fagots" here and still consider themselves absolutely tolerant - and then in the finale it continues with a rather brain-devastated idea.
But that does not change the astonishing didactic intentions and the exhilarating effect of the work. "The Perfect Secret" is an educational film. Director Dagtekin, who has become famous for his three "Fack-ju-Göthe" pranks, here warns us about the lies we set ourselves apart from our lack of openness - and the "Smombie" madness (from "Smartphone "and" zombie ") of our time.
Basically, this movie says: Lock your smartphones in the fridge! Start talking and living! For an entertainment product with the appearance of an advertising clip, that's a surprising message.
