FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Cameron Crowe - Singles 

The Singles is a group of friends and neighbours who live together in an apartment building in Seattle. And it's 1992, the time when grunge started! They are all in their 20s, quite attractive and they dream of love. And they all share a plight that almost everyone can identify with: The difficulty of finding someone to love (although their plight is not very desperate, after all, life among friends is not bad either!). And isn't it always the case with love that one half of the equation is always right and the other is not? One couple in the film (Campbell Scott and Kyra Sedgwick) play a dangerous game we call pride. It goes like this: Who will call the other first? Shouldn't one wait for the other to call back? I have made up my own theory about this, which cannot end well on any point. Why doesn't the other person call back? 1. he/she is playing a game. That is never nice! 2. he/she wants to hurt you. Not nice at all! 3. she/he is not interested. Well, not nice either. Anyway, this couple is also thinking so much past each other that it's almost too late and they lose sight of each other. Because as said, there comes a point when an unreturned call is no longer exciting, but simply has to be perceived as unrequited love. And then there's this couple (Bridget Fonda and Matt Dillon) who are working completely wrong. He's a drummer in a rock band (grunge!) with a casually indifferent attitude towards women. He has cultivated this indifference towards his own girlfriend in particular. And her? She thinks SHE is actually to blame. And when she finds the pictures of blonde pinups in his flat, she runs to the surgeon.... Singles was written and directed by Cameron Crowe. The former music critic didn't choose Seattle as the setting by chance, of course, because all his films are always music films. He has refined his style, stringing together episodes that deal with the all too human. Each episode shows a facet of human nature. For the netflix generation, this could be a challenge, as the story is not told stringently, but loosely. There is no problem at the beginning and then the solution at the end. The film is about life and that is inherently inconclusive. And one of the insights of singles is that in your 20s you spend more time trying to make a name for yourself than worrying about the happiness of others. Everyone believes in themselves first and foremost (except the girl who runs to the plastic surgeon to optimise her own body on a monitor to please a man who doesn't like her at all). The singles also work, but rarely in their final profession. Instead of being an architect, one still hires herself out as a waitress. Cameron Crowe also demonstrates temporal phenomena like partner video exchanges. Until she even meets a director you'd better stay away from. He looks like Tim Burton (and is, by the way) and makes films that put women off. Singles is not a great film, but one you can watch again and again. Not an innovative film, but a familiar one. One of those films that feels as if you are at home. You smile a lot, you find yourself in it and you like the characters, often enough you recognise yourself in them.