Posted: 03/21/2007

Summer in Berlin

(2005)

by Ed Moore

Loneliness permeates nearly every frame of Summer in Berlin, a peek into the lives of two women living in the German capital.

Nike (Nadja Uhl) rides her bicycle all over Berlin and takes care of elderly shut-ins. Her downstairs neighbor and best friend, Katrin (Inka Friedrich), is a divorcee raising her son, Max (Vincent Redetzki), who is hopelessly in love with one of his classmates, Charly (Lil Oggeson). Charly jogs a lot, so Max wants Katrin to buy him some expensive running shoes, but she’s unemployed and looking for work as a window dresser. (In interviews, her desperation is palpable—when an interviewer mentions that Katrin is 40, she politely corrects the interviewer: “39 and a half.”)

Nike and Katrin spend most of their evenings on Nike’s balcony, drinking and prank-calling the local pharmacist or Katrin’s ex-husband. One afternoon, Katrin is nearly run down by a truck driver named Ronald (Andreas Schmidt), whom she and Nike later run into at their favorite pub. Nike is interested, but so is their waitress, Tina (Stephanie Schonfeld). Nike returns to the pub another night, runs into Ronald again, and they start dating—if, by “dating,” you mean “Ronald comes over to have sex, eat Nike’s food and ask if he can move in.”

This new relationship puts a stain on Nike’s friendship with Katrin—not because everything’s so perfect (Nike has trouble remembering Ronald’s name), but because it makes Katrin’s despair more obvious, especially after Katrin is nearly raped in front of her son after a drunken night at a club. Max has his own problems to deal with—not only is he trying to keep up with Charly in shoes that blister his feet, but he finds out that a chain-smoking classmate has the hots for her, too.

This all makes Summer in Berlin sound more action-packed than it really is. It’s not so much a character study as much as an observation of a season in these women’s lives, and it works best when director Andreas Dresen steps back and just watches, like when Katrin has a crying jag after a phone conversation with her ex-husband; after the tears have stopped, the camera lingers on her a few moments more, underscoring that she’s not just being pummeled by waves of despair, but is on the verge of drowning.

Another particularly effective moment: After two thugs break in on one of Nike’s elderly charges and she chases them off with a knife (“There’s gonna be blood”), she moves on to another patient, but has to sit down because she so shaken; Dresen lets the moment hang in the hot summer air as Nike composes herself.

That’s what Summer in Berlin is made up of: Snapshots of the emotional trajectories of these two women and the people around them, and how those trajectories intersect, diverge and intersect again. Friedrich has the meatier role as Katrin and effectively conveys her sadness, anger and frustration.

Uhl is no less effective as Nike, whose life is better, but only when compared to Katrin’s. Her job doesn’t do much for her and neither does her “boyfriend,” and Uhl gets this across with small, tense looks and body gestures in quiet moments. Schmidt plays Ronald as a bit of an amoral, disinterested jerk, but with just enough charm and humanity to make it understandable that Nike would let him into her bed.

There are no big moments in Summer in Berlin—it’s not a “big moments” kind of movie, and no one’s life is radically different when the credits roll. Rather, it shows us the lives of ordinary, lonely people doing ordinary, lonely things. Consequently, it’s a relatively ordinary movie—unlikely to provoke inspire or outright laughter, but with enough moments of emotional truth to provoke a few wry smiles and nods of recognition.

Ed Moore is a film reviewer living in Chicago.

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