STUDIO: Music Box | DIRECTOR: Jan Ole Gerster | CAST: Tom Schilling, Friederike Kempter, Marc Hosemann, Katharina Schüttler, Justus von Dohnányi, Andreas Schröders
RELEASE DATE: 10/21/14 | PRICE: DVD $29.99, Blu-ray $34.99
BONUSES: Conversation with director Jan Ole Gerster and film critic Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, music featurette, Tom Schilling improvisation, outtakes, deleted scenes, casting tapes
SPECS: NR | 88 min. | Foreign language comedy | 1.85:1 widescreen | Dolby Digital 5.1/ DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 | German with English subtitlesRATINGS (out of 5 dishes): Movie
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Old-time jazz, black-and-white film, the small details of daily life… these are the trademarks of French New Wave Cinema. Filter them through a Woody Allen sense of humor, pour it all into a bowl of German urbanity, and you’ve pretty much got yourself Jan Ole Gerster (Oh Boy) ‘s debut feature, A Coffee In Berlin, a film that wears its influences proudly on its sleeves.
Tom Schilling ponders…and ponders…in A Coffee in Berlin.
Niko (Tom Schilling) is our protagonist, a selfish, spoiled, superficial millennial who dumps his girlfriend in a cowardly way, hasn’t told his father about dropping out of school two years ago, and really has no clue what he wants to do with himself. It’s a familiar story, and one that will speak to a wide-eyed 20-year-old much more than it will a cinema-hardened 40-year-old. For those of us in that bracket, it’s tough to feel any kind of sympathy for a spoiled kid who’s been given everything yet done nothing with it. Far from the disaffected Holden Caulfield the film wants to portray, Niko just proves himself to be a vapid pretty boy who’s never gone through an honest day’s work. The running gag of Niko’s fruitless search for a cup of coffee throughout his day plays like a bad wannabe Jim Jarmusch gag—kinda clever, but just a little too trite to be convincing.
With all of this in play, it may surprise you to hear that A Coffee In Berlin works. The characters that enter and exit Niko’s single day are quirky, but not contrived; they’re natural and believable, with well-performed roles and enjoyable dialogue to munch on. No major insights or Oscar-worthy soliloquies to be found here, but the story is well-crafted, well-paced, and lively, something many of these films tend to mess up. It maintains the vibe of a light Woody Allen comedy throughout, and succeeds in making the completely useless Niko a sympathetic and likeable guy—an impressive feat given my generation’s lack of patience with millennials and their self-obsessed issues. Gerster proves his skill at letting his characters’ humanity come forth, rendering A Coffee In Berlin a miniature gem.
Music Box provides a nice DVD package. Included is a 40-minute interview with the director, who is clearly in semiautobiographical territory with his protagonist Niko, and who reveals some insights into his working process. A nice little piece on the jazz music recorded for the film, a screen test with one of the more memorable actors in the film, an early improvised short (done as a warm up to the feature), outtakes, and a couple of deleted scenes round out a portrait of the young cast and crew’s loose and relaxed approach to this charming little story. A Coffee In Berlin doesn’t really break new ground or inspire new thoughts, but it does remind you to enjoy the little moments while you’re pondering the big stuff.
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