Everyone Else [Import]

`Alle Anderen' is an astonishingly good film that I really didn't see coming. It was recommended to me from some friends and it certainly looked up my ally (I'm surprised I didn't hear of it first myself) so I dove in without hesitation. What I found was something far deeper and far more profound than I expected.

It moved me.

The film is simple. It follows a young couple, Gitti and Chris, as they discover themselves and their relationship over a vacation in Italy. Chris and Gitti are a new couple. Although this isn't explicitly addressed, it is pretty obvious by their demeanor and their brand of turmoil. Childless and searching for direction in their relationship and their lives, Gitti and Chris seem like your average couple really. The beauty of it all is that they are. They are happy, not ridiculously so but certainly happy. They have their worries and problems and troubles but they don't hate one another and they don't want an out to their relationship. But, like most normally happy people in relationships they are still testing out, they smell trouble when they encounter another couple who is so much happier (seemingly) than they are. Once the couples begin to interact they begin to dissect one another far too much; at least Gitti and Chris fall into that pattern. Soon, what was working is all of a sudden not working at all and the relationship begins to fray.

It makes you question what `happy' really means.

Maren Ade beautifully layers `Alle Anderen' with all the right details, embellishing and fleshing out this relationship with an effortless quality. It is so real and honest in its depiction of your everyday worries and trials. Nothing seems overdone or overworked. This is a very simple yet startlingly authentic look at your typical relationship.

This is all aided tremendously by the powerful performances by the two leads. Birgit Minichmayr especially understands how to craft her performance to draw in the viewer. She captures the spunk and tenacious drive that makes Gitti so likable (and, albeit a tad annoying). Lars Eidinger has to walk a step or two behind Birgit, since Chris is far less abrasive, more subtle and reserved; and he nails that beautifully. You can see his mind working through his sullen eyes, and you understand that all that is going on underneath is all that is manifesting on the surface. The supporting cast as well, which is mainly Hans-Jochen Wagner and Nicole Marischka, are also effortless and memorable.

The ending, for me, was PERFECT. You want something so abrasively climactic and yet Maren Ade understands that anticlimactic is far more appropriate for a film of this nature. The ending, while some may consider a letdown, is so pure and believably sincere. The path this particular relationship will take is totally undetermined but the audience gets an inkling of a clue as to how Gitti and Chris plan to resolve their differences.

Subtle, smart and wholly realistic; `Alle Anderen' is positively perfect.

That anyone would rate this even 2 stars is unbelievable to me. Do not waste 2 hours of your life to watch this movie unless you "think" you are some sort of "intellectual".

Acting was sub par, but the plot was just incredibly dull, boring and pointless. Some acts and scenes were just: "what the heck just happened there?" type stuff.

If you can't fall asleep, then watch this.

I think other reviewers are somehow related to someone involvrd in this cluster-****.

If I had paid for this movie I would have demanded my money back. That is how bad this thing was.

***1/2

Similar in style and tone to last year's "Blue Valentine," the German film "Everyone Else" provides us with an oblique look at a troubled relationship. Though the couple in this film does not seem as overtly unhappy as the one in the American work, there is still something clearly eating away at their relationship. The most admirable aspect of the screenplay by Maren Ade is that it doesn't throw easy labels onto either the characters or the problems they're facing. The movie is really more a piece of objective reportage chronicling their lives over the course of a few days than a plot- and theme-driven narrative leading us to a preordained conclusion about them as people.

Chris (Lars Eidinger) is a gifted but apparently not very successful architect, while Gitti (Birgit Minichmayr), his girlfriend, who works in the recording business, seems to be generally supportive of his efforts. Chris and Gitti are spending a relaxing vacation at his mother's home on the Mediterranean, when Gitti begins to off-handedly question Chris's masculinity (we assume that it has more to do with his lack of initiative and drive than with his personal mannerisms). In response, Chris begins to treat Gitti in an ever more callous fashion, trying to prove her wrong by acting in the dismissive and domineering way he assumes "real" men do, and in the way, if Gitta is any indication, women apparently want them to.

But this synopsis really only covers the tip of the iceberg, for there are clearly many more complex dynamics taking place within this relationship that are not so easily delineated and described. Suffice it to say that the movie explores the myriad elements that go into relationships, and does so without spelling them out in simplistic terms and without passing judgment on the characters. The parameters within which any relationship must be set are still evolving and fluid in the case of Chris and Gitti, and this leads to much pushing of the boundaries and behavioral experimentation on the part of the couple throughout the course of the film. Ade's direction is unobtrusive and observational in nature, which allows the actors to interact with one another in a quasi-improvisational and thus wholly believable fashion.

There is, however, a definite downside to this type of storytelling - "Blue Valentine" suffered from it as well - and that is that the motivations for the characters' actions are often so murky and inexplicable that they can seem downright arbitrary to those of us who are watching all of this unfold from the outside in. That's why Chris and Gitti strike us as being more weird and annoying - if not downright daffy - than anything else at times.

Thus, your initial response might be to assume that perhaps Chris and Gitti simply aren't meant for one another and that they might think about looking elsewhere for a relationship. But, then again, if it were that easy to get out of a troubled relationship, we'd have no need in the first place for films like "Everyone Else."