Love In Thoughts [2004] [DVD]

A beautiful langorous film of young love. I was entranced by the beauty of the characters - Hilde in particular. Although all set over a few days it evokes a long summer of growing up and falling in love. The soundtrack is lovely. A very absorbing film. And you don't work out what really happened until the end. This is an enchanting film to take you away to another world and time. The historical context is there but the film shows the real lives of people without the bigger drama going on around them. It makes you remember that when things were happening which we now can't understand the people were just absorbed in their own natural lives and loves.

It's 1927 and hot hazy sunshine pervades those extensive forests that surround the German capital. A young poet, Paul Krantz, relaxes at the rural summer home of the family of his schoolfriend, Guenter Scheller. There Paul meets Guenter's sister Hilda. Paul falls for Hilda; Hilda is in love with a working boy called Hans; whilst Guenter is in love with ...Well, let's not spoil the plot, but the answer is not what you might think. Suffice to say, this is less a love-triangle and more of love squared. We follow events based on a true story, from the Friday afternoon of the lads' original arrival at the summer cottage to the tragedy unravelled on the following Monday morning.The German title is `Was nutzt die Liebe in Gedanken?', what use is it just thinking of love? It is a line taken up by Hilda from Paul's own poetry. Wonderfully acted by all concerned (as well as Daniel Bruhl and August Diehl, the film also has the beautiful Dane Thure Lindhardt as Hans), and shot in a golden sepia tone, this film has a brooding and foreboding intensity that captures the viewer's interest from the start.Alas, despite a `Making of' appearing in the credits, there are no extras with my copy of the DVD.

Günther and Paul are convinced that life must be lived to the fullest and without compromise - they demand the same of love. Together with Günther's sister, Hilde, they set out for a sultry, summer weekend in Günther and Hilde's country home. Paul is fascinated by Hilde and falls in love with her. Hilde, however, can't be pinned down by this handsome and sensative young suitor as her capsity for love is far too large for just one. She slips off to secretly meet with Hans - Günther's former lover and now one of hers.Their friends arrive and an all night party begins. Hans can't resist joining the party, though he knows that Günther has never really gotten over him. High on music and real Absinth, emotions and desires mix with jealousies to create a deadly pact.Daniel Brühl (Germany's answer to Jake Gyllenhaal) leads this young, talented and attractive cast in this beautifully crafted film based on a true story.

The events of this film seem to take place over a few days so it is perhaps not surprising that the film is long on mood and short on story-line. Though based on a true story set in the days of the Weimar Republic, there is little sense of the social and political atmosphere of the times, other than hedonism. The film holds one's attention reasonably well but it might have been a more interesting film had it followed the lives of the protagonists beyond the events portrayed, rather than relating them as a footnote at the end of the film.

Funny how two people viewing the same film can have two completely different opinions. 'Love in Thoughts' (dumb title for a dumb film)seemed to me vacuous and incredibly dull. The story (based on actual events) is thin and portentous. The leads are ciphers not characters, much of the dialogue is crass, and the attractive cast do little more than pout, glower or stare moodily into the middle-distance - it would've taken a River Phoenix to make anything out of this leaden nonsense. The shooting style is arty/pretentious and the pace is the wrong side of slow, not helped by the occasional use of slow motion for no obvious reason - as if the film weren't slow enough! You'd be more challanged, absorbed and entertained watching a turkey cook in an oven.

Disappointing

This very fine story is unluckily damaged. The DVD automatically stop half way during the film and cannot continue till the end. Frustrating. Maybe it is because the DVD is used.

This movie is absolutely lush. Although it is ultimately a very tragic (and true) story of unrequited love, murder and suicide, the job of telling the story like it's 1927 is safe in the hands of this filmmaker. Every scene, every sound drips of a languorous summer weekend in the woods, on water, culminating in the heat of the city, delivering danger as if it were as inevitable but as passing as a summer storm. I've come to trust Daniel Brühl's judgement in selecting projects as much as his talent in carrying them out. He hasn't just stacked up a lengthy résumé -- he's leaving behind a legacy of the art of visual storytelling. This is yet another golden thread stitching up his video knapsack. His performance as Paul (the young poet and central character in the telling of the story) grows from his first wide-eyed innocent observation on a sultry Friday afternoon framed by lazy summer breezes through cotton and lace curtains that it felt like paradise -- a boy with little more on his mind than the expert flirtations of a beautiful girl -- to his final guilt-ridden observation that it didn't matter that he hadn't done anything, only that he thought of it, that he contributed to the thought of what happened by the elegant silken curtains of a Berlin apartment on a crazy Sunday evening. And now he is left with pained but vacant stares locked onto the face of the girl he should have loved enough, but didn't. Every nerve, every sinew in his body tell the same story that his face and voice do. ALL of the performances in this film are spot-on. August Diehl as Paul's doomed friend Günther (and loving brother of the beautiful girl) is in the driver's seat throughout -- literally and figuratively -- in a great performance. He is the one who loves everyone, rightly or wrongly -- but in another instance of feeling, the viewer feels forever helpless to save him, however sincerely his sister Hilde may call him The Great Manitou, however much we may agree, however much we may love him. The miles of difference between Hilde and her friend Elli (and Paul's only romantic conquest after all) (played artfully by Anna Maria Mühe and Jana Pallaske, respectively) are not enough to save them from the same fate -- sad footnotes to someone else's more powerful history. However well played Hans was by Thure Lindhardt, he fulfilled his job of leading us not to care about him -- captured well by Günther's tears and Paul's fumbling attempt at a wrestling match. It doesn't help that you know what is going to happen. You're caught in the web of an old-fashioned opulence -- summer heat as we no long know it; steamy lakes, train rides to and from the city, raids on mom and dad's wine cellar; music from victrolas, guitars and taken-apart pianos belonging to people rich enough to permit your journey into melody and percussion; whispered nothings from a girl who doesn't mean it, forthright offerings from a girl who does; all wrapped up in sunlight or moonlight, in shadows or truth, There's a reason that DVD cover is golden. So is the movie. Dare you watch it without air conditioning? I think you should. I think they made it that way -- Bravo.

Good movie!

De magnifiques acteurs qui jouent très bien et une histoire envoûtante, le tout filmé avec soin. Je vous le recommande. Attention n'éxiste pas en version Française, uniquement en sous-titres Français.

Daniel Bruhl is one pf the best actors of this age.

Came as advertised and arrived on time