For 14 years, the Goethe-Institut’s Berlin & Beyond series was associated with the damp darkness of post-holiday January. The shortness of the days, the scarcity of light and the cloudy mood suited the Teutonic outlook — as well as San Franciscans’ impulse toward existential gloominess. This is not to suggest that all German-language films are grim and depressing, but you must admit that the phrase “German comedies” does not trip lightly off the tongue.
The festival’s regrettable switch from January to October — from a movie calendar populated only by Oscar-bait holdovers and Noir City to the crazily chock-a-block fall — was occasioned by the departure of founder and director Ingrid Eggers and an alliance with a Southland festival, German Currents in Los Angeles. Sophoan Sorn is the new director of Berlin & Beyond, and he has curated an ambitious and impressive lineup of 26 dramas, comedies and documentaries (plus a sprinkling of shorts) from Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
“Vincent Wants to Sea”
It’s the practice of film festivals to seek out crowd-pleasers for opening night that are neither too demanding nor too downbeat. Ralf Huettner’s Vincent Wants to Sea delivers on both counts, tossing in a surfeit of pretty postcard shots as a bonus. How churlish of me, then, to point out that it’s a glossy, shallow timewaster posing as a poignant parable. Florian David Fitz, who penned the script and will be in attendance, stars as a Tourette’s-afflicted fellow on the run to Italy with his OCD roommate and an anorexic, pursued by his self-important father and a well-meaning therapist. Vincent Wants to Sea aspires to be a screwball comedy (complete with a horrible punning title) that tugs at your heart, a feat that Preston Sturges and only a few others could accomplish.
“When We Leave”