Love in Thoughts

Wow. This is an amazing story, told amazingly well. Passionate and

compelling from the first scene to the last, "Love In Thoughts" takes us

into the volatile, romantic, reckless lives of a group of rebellious

students in 1927 Germany.

Based on the story of the infamous Steglitz student tragedy, a group of

romantic-thinking, outside-of-the-box-living 20-somethings make a pact

about how tragically far they'd go for love. Aside from their shared

passion for parties and love, the main characters have little in common.

The brilliant, shy, poetic Paul is a loner from the working class, while

his best friend, Guenther, is a wealthy gay boy from the countryside. Then

Guenther invites Paul home to the rich countryside for the weekend -- a

weekend of limitless love, sex, bohemian-style partying, jealousy,

rationale, and a completely unexpected outcome.

"Love in Thoughts" tells a passionately disturbing and ultimately

irresistable story. It's heartbreaking yet invigorating, shocking yet

somehow simple. It's a powerful story, and a great movie.

'Was nützt die Liebe in Gedanken' ('Love in Thoughts'), while based on a true incident in Berlin in 1927, is a story about the confusion of adolescent hormonally driven needs and desires brought to the screen by director Achim von Borries based on a dramatization by Hendrik Handloegten, Annette Hess and Alexander Pfeuffer of the Steglitz Student murders. It is as much a tale of the decadent 20s in the Berlin that would breed the Nazi Party as it is a stirring thriller. And if think back to the times of this story, a similar theme was being played out in this country under the names of Leopold and Loeb! Strange crossover...

Paul (Daniel Brühl) is a student poet from a working class family who makes friends with Günther (August Diehl) who is a gay and wild romantic from the wealthy class. Their common thread is their sense of rebellion against their families and the need for Byronic defiance in a world they find shallow. The make a 'suicide pact' - that once they discover true happiness in love, and knowing that true love cannot be repeated, they will commit suicide.

The two lads go to the country home for a weekend party of drinking and carousing. Günther brings along his love Hans (Thure Lindhardt), a kitchen worker clearly not in Günther's social class, who begins having a sexual liaision with Hilde (Anna Maria Mühe), Günther's lusty, superficial, hedonistic sister. Paul is in love with Hilde, but at the party he observes her acts of sexual freedom and turns to plain Elli (Jana Pallaske) for his initial sexual encounter. When Günther realizes he has lost Hans to Hilde, the options of the 'suicide pact' play out in a gruesome way. Paul is left to tell the story, later becoming a novelist (condemned by the Nazis and thrown into exile).

Achim von Borries manages to recreate this sick tale with all the feeling of Weimar decadence. It takes a while to get the characters straight, but once they are in place the development of each has a fearsome momentum. The young cast is excellent. It is refreshing to see a film that includes a gay main character whose sexuality is at the core of his life but at the same time the story is not focused on the gay character so much as being focused on all youth in a cumbersome time in history and in adolescent physiology! The film is in German with English subtitles and presents the actual events of the case in writing on the screen after the story is completed. Very Effective. Grady Harp, October 05

Anyone following the career of Daniel Brühl will want to see this film, especially anyone who felt, rightly, cheated by Brühl's walk-on in "The Bourne Ultimatum." "Love in Thoughts" takes a rather moralistic view of a handful of young people in the years between World Wars I and II. Like young people in movies tend to do, these fall in love too hard and learn to regret it. Paul loves Hilde and Günther loves Hans, but Hilde and Hans love themselves. A fifth character, or wheel, is Elli, who just wants to be loved, period. Paul and Günther, however, who have nothing in common but who have inexplicably been friends since childhood, make a pact to commit suicide once they have known one happy moment in their short lives. Well, it's the sort of thing kids do. The problem is that there is only so much happpiness to go around, and Günther, to say the least, misses out on all of it. Or perhaps he was happy romping through the woods with his Platonic boyhood friend? The movie doesn't really do much with motivation. When Paul closes the door in one crucial scene, what really happens is between him and his conscience, no matter what the courts later say. "Love in Thoughts" is based on a true incident, and the viewer is left with one of those "where are they now?" postscripts that doesn't really add much to our understanding of the film. What I did like, in addition to seeing Daniel Brühl get a relatively meaty role, were the music and the cinematography. The former was a witty addition to an otherwise far too sober screenplay, while the latter put me in mind of a similar trip down memory lane in "Atonement." Don't dig for any deeper meaning: we do not learn why Germany's youth embraced Nazism in the '30s, for instance (Really, we DON'T). But do look for a credible time-passer, especially on DVD, where, in the comfort of your living room, the film's leisurely pace should not lead to ennui (the perils of which are on constant parade in the film itself) and you will be free to enjoy the acting skills of a fine troop of young German actors, all of whom acquit themselves quite handsomely.

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