Vom Suchen und Finden der Liebe
Germany 2005

Opening 27 Jan 2005

Directed by: Helmut Dietl
Writing credits: Helmut Dietl, Patrick Süskind
Principal actors: Moritz Bleibtreu, Alexandra Maria Lara, Uwe Ochsenknecht, Anke Engelke, Heino Ferch

I was already familiar with director Helmut Dietl due to his many television productions. Still I was amazed when I watched this film. It is full of nice phrases, thoughts, perfect dialogues and acting, which is unusual in German films. The film is a poem about love (the German title, Vom Suchen und Finden der Liebe, would be loosely translated to Seeking and Finding Love in English), based on the Greek myth Orfeo and Euridice. As in history, the film’s apocalypse is also in Greece. The background music comes from Glück who also describes love between the same two persons in the opera Orfeo and Euridice. Dietl tries to make an apology about love: love and death…or sex without love…or love after death …or death for love… …or love without sex is death …who knows? The tragedy and problem of the relationship is when people wake up to see that the deep feeling they had for each other has died and none of it could be anticipated nor avoided. And there is the wish to repeat the past, getting a second chance to do it better. The perfect or eternal love: is that real or only a fantasy? Years ago I watched a similar film with the same topic, which was also nice: Orfeu do Carnaval by Vinicius de Moraes and he said love, “…may be not forever because it is a fire, but should be enormous as long as it burns …” There is a very illustrious cast of German actors: Moritz Beibtreu, Alexandra Maria Lara, Uwe Ochsenknecht, Anke Engelke, Harald Schmidt, Justus von Dohnányi, and Heino Ferch. (Geysa Wiemann)