Puppe, Icke & Der Dicke
Germany 2012

Opening 22 Nov 2012

Directed by: Felix Stienz
Writing credits: Felix Stienz, Georg Struck
Principal actors: Stéphanie Capetanidés, Tobi B, Matthias Scheuring

The main characters of this quirky road-movie (by Felix Stienz) meet by chance and travel together by car from Paris to Berlin, each for their very own reasons. A dwarfed loudmouth and native Berliner nicknamed Bomber (Tobi B) is on his way home from a ‘business trip’ gone sour in Paris. He offers a ride to the kind-hearted, mute ‘heavyweight’ Bruno (Matthias Scheuring); Europe (Stephanie Capetanides) is beautiful, blind and also from Paris. She ‘joins the club’ after her friend Bruno spots her at an Autobahn rest stop where she has arrived after a turbulent travel experience.

Not surprisingly for a road-movie – the journey is the destination, and what a journey it is! There are many – too many – characters, stories, sketches and complications to keep track of and not to lose orientation. But all segments are funny and well acted! Karoline Schuch, for example, delights with a monologue ranting and raving about her ‘Ex’. Europe and her then-travel-companion Eva (Nadia Kibout) hitched a ride with her and are the unwilling recipients of this outburst; for their ‘lack of appreciation’ they wind up back on the road. Compliments also to the production designer (Michal Galinski) and cinematographers (Lynne Linder and Markus Förderer), who produced exceptional images. Most of the fun is listening to Bomber who always speaks his mind. In order not to miss out on anything the viewer should a) know enough German to understand English interspersed with Germanisms b) understand English well enough to detect those Germanisms and c) understand the special Berlin dialect, that is Bomber’s native tongue. (Carola A)