This film, released in 2000, is full of A-list actors, and of course the famous Tom Tykwer as director. It is billed as a drama-romance. Taking place in a mental institution, the setting lends itself well to such a description.
We’ve already explored many of our cast in previous posts. Franka Potente, Joachim Król, and Benno Fürmann are perhaps the biggest and most versatile names here, but we shouldn’t forget Lars Rudolph or Ludger Pistor.
We should also take a moment to appreciate Tom Tykwer’s work. Lola rennt was not his first film (see Winterschläfer for starters), but his experience there may have had the largest effect on his future work. This film immediately followed Lola rennt, and the artistic choices made here show how everything is connected in the same way that Lola rennt does – yet it has its own feeling and meaning. More recently, Tykwer has directed a few episodes of Sense8 and several Babylon Berlin episodes.
This film gets into the psyche of troubled people, regardless of the types of trouble they’ve had. It explores differences in our past with some glimmer of hope for a future healing together.
This film is rated R in the U.S. for disturbing images, language, and some sexual content. I have little doubt that this could receive a PG-13 rating 19 years later, though some of the images are indeed relatively disturbing. At 14 minutes in, the nurse performs a sexual act on a patient. Nothing is visible, but it is clear what is happening, and other patients witness this, which makes for a key plot piece in some interpretations. Just over an hour in, a man is showering. He is only seen from the back. This nudity lasts for about two minutes. He is very briefly (barely a flash) seen nude again an hour and 46 minutes in. This is preceded by a longer scene in which he is in the bath.