Horst in Translation ([email protected])
"Im Juli." (don't forget the full stop) is an early Faith Akin film starring two young German actors Moritz Bleibtreu and Christiane Paul, both still under 30 years old. Bleibtreu won the German Film Award for his work here and in "Das Experiment". Not too big on Paul usually, but I thought she gave a decent performance here, even if I found Idil Üner 10 times as attractive as her. And Mehmert Kurtulus plays a character whose story I found almost more interesting than the one from Bleibtreu's character. Sadly, we only find out the very basics about him. Initially, he seems like a contract killer with a corpse in the trunk of his car, but things are not always what they seem. For Akin, it was sort of an early breakthrough film, not as big as "Gegen die Wand, but still pretty successful.The film's big strength is the writing. Akin did a fine job here. There are only very few scenes when it is off the mark, for example the border scene that features Akin himself in a cameo as a border official. The whole marriage reference is slightly cheesy as are the words that Bleibtreu's character says to Juli at the end. On a side-note, somehow I always felt that Juli would not be attracted to a nice looking guy like Bleibtreu's character. Anyway, back to the writing. The whole bridge part was pretty genius. That he intended to go there to meet the one girl first, but finally the other girl. I also liked that when he sees Juli from behind it was the typical scene that it could turn out to be somebody else in a comedic fashion, but here it was actually her. We see the transformation in Bleibtreu's mind who's the right one for him when the Turkish girl sees him, holds his eyes and he asks if it is Juli, because by that point Juli is already the one he wants. The sun reference early on was nicely done as well. But it won't work with him if she tries to force it as he sees another girl with a sun first. They need to get to know each other first on their journey.The supporting cast is decent too. I won't list the names, you can check the cast list for that, but a few of them have worked with Akin before or afterward (especially Bleibtreu several times) and most of them are at least familiar faces to those with an interest in German cinema. The pub brawl scene with Jochen Nickel (okay, now I named one) was one of my favorite scenes. The Russian criminal girl scenes, however, I did not like as much. All in all, I recommend this movie, even if its ending was as cheesy as expected. If you like it, take a look at "The Sure Thing" starring John Cusack. There's quite a few parallels.
