FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Francois Ozon - Swimming Pools 

Charlotte Rampling embodies the most wicked thoughts you've ever had and never dared to speak out. Remember their early roles. Rampling was always sexual and courageous, but also a woman who deceives men. A femme fatale who became famous as a Nazi whore. Swimming Pool by Francois Ozon knows the early roles of Charlotte Rampling and even assumes them. Here she plays Sarah Morton. An insecure, tired and British-inhibited writer. Her publisher offers Sarah a holiday in his villa in southern France. Sarah goes there to write, but also in the hope of a holiday together with her publisher (Charles Dance)... Instead she arrives unexpectedly and in the middle of the night: Julie (Ludivine Sagnier), the daughter. Sarah reacts angrily. Her privacy and her sense of decency were violated. Julie is very self-confident about her effect on men. The burgeoning sexual power of a teenager. She brings home men who have nothing in common. Never mind! Julie sleeps with everyone and takes them in. Sarah reacts as disapprovingly as fascinated. And Julie? She seems to be completely indifferent to Sarah. Sarah, on the other hand, even steals insights from the girl's diary (which she dresses up for her own book). One evening Julie Franck (Jean-Marie Lamour) brings home with her. But he shows more interest for Sarah. A turning point. Violence, guilt, deception find their way into Francois' film. A thriller! What is more disturbing than having to hide a crime that cries out to be solved? A paranoid nightmare develops... And finally Charlotte Rampling is allowed to show her sexual boldness. This is not a fight between the sexes, but a fight between young and old! Swimming Pool is one of those films that our customers at the video store give me back and recapitulate once again. What did I just see? What was that like? But for me one thing is certain: Swimming Pool doesn't offer different approaches, only THE one solution! That's your motivation!

FREE ON CINEGEEK.De Valeska Grisebach - Western 

That's good. The most interesting new films from Germany are made by women. Western is the third feature film by Valeska Grisebach, born 1968 in Bremen and raised in Berlin. A friend Maren Ades, whose distributor "Komplizen Film" Western also produced. If you want to know more about Grisebach, read in the production notes that she grew up with the Western genre. Even more; as a child she could identify best with cowboys! Now she is testing her role models. On the surface, it's easy: Western is a Western. But it's a western playing in Bulgaria. There are no cowboys either, but there are construction workers and farmers. But we discover typical Western set pieces: A campfire, a horse, the stranger in town, rivalry, a woman and even a gun. A group of German construction workers are to build a power plant there in Bulgaria, somewhere on the Greek border, but everything is missing. After all, they fly the German flag. Then foreman Vincent (Reinhardt Wetrek) allows himself a silly remark while the construction workers bathe naked, while a group of women show up on the other side of the river. When construction worker Meinhard (Meinhard Neumann) roams the village, history has already got around... There is a lot of talk about the Germans, who of course don't understand a word. But we're in the Western and cowboys hardly speak either. They look each other in the eye and that way they know who's lying... 

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Apichatpong Weerasethakul - Uncle Boonmee 

And what if our identity exists for all time and occasionally shows itself on the surface of life? At the moment we become aware of this, life would be without time limit. Isn't there this thought that we still knew heaven as children? As we get older and nearer to death, we receive them again, the greetings of the other side. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives offers this possibility. The title sounds as mysterious as that of its director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. At least for western ears. But if you are open to stories with ghosts who sometimes visit us, you have come to the right film! When I saw Unlce Boonmee for the second time, I realized that the movie was easy to understand. A dying man like Boonmee is also not particularly productive for a plot or action. He's taking his leave. Some things may seem strange like meeting a catfish. But that changes, if you look at the work from the point of view of reincarnation. Uncle Boonmee (Thanapat Saisaymar) lived as a farmer in the south of Thailand. It wasn't a very happy life. His nation was in turmoil during his lifetime and he certainly experienced more of it than he deserves! Now he dies with some family members and a nurse. He dies in his house in the jungle, in the middle of nature and sometimes ghosts appear to him like his dead wife (as beautiful as in his lifetime) or his son (with red eyes). But this is not a "classic" ghost movie, just because the ghosts are different than we expect them to be. Basically, they behave like humans and probably also exist in the consciousness. One time Boonmee enters a cave that looks like a womb. If man and the world are one, why should it not be the earth that gives life? In the end, I wondered whether the "real" world has more substance than that of hallucinations and visions? Doesn't what just happens in our heads happen? Is this "real"? Boonmee remembers during his last days the moments of his life and those who accompanied him. It's as simple as that.