FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Julio Medem - The Red Squirrel 

Most of the time I watch a movie and can finish it from the first scene. This film by Julio Medem is different. I never know what might come next. But La ardilla roja is much more than just a vetrickstes mindgame movie. It is a big love movie! The musician Jota (Nancho Novo) stands on a bridge to take his own life because his girlfriend left him. Suddenly a young motorcyclist (Emma Suárez) breaks through the railing and lands in the sand. He rushes to help her, but she can't remember anything. In the hospital he pretends to be a friend of the blonde and explains that her name is Lisa. They had been living together for four years. To remember, he suggests a camping holiday. La ardilla roja is the name of the campsite and from now on the squirrels will determine the fate of the couple. Julio Medem has succeeded in creating a highly unlikely, but very captivating romance. He has us until the last moment and surprises us again and again. Nothing is as it seems, except the fact that the two of them have a passionate love affair. The lies Jota Lisa tells about her "past" aren't just passively accepted by her. Finally Lisa's ex-husband Felix (Carmelo Gomez) comes into play, who identifies her as Sofia Fuentes... Maybe it's all filmed a bit awkward and even ridiculous towards the end? But that doesn't matter at all because of the great love couple. In the face of death, they try to find out the basics: Who am I? What does love mean at all? Within their web of lies they get to the bottom of life.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Claude Sautet - Un Coeur En Hiver 

There are people who can't love. Why is unclear. Something is missing. They were simply born without this gift. In other areas they may be complete. But the gift to love is missing. Irreparable. Claude Sautet's "Un Coeur En Hiver" is the story of such a man. His name is Stephane (Daniel Auteuil) and he is a talented violin maker. Stephane admires Maxime (Andre Dussollier), for whom he also works. They are friends. Or is it not? In any case, Maxime's social skills serve Stephane as a shield against the world. In return, Maxime benefits from Stephen's extraordinary skill. A symbiosis. One day the beautiful violinist Camille (porcelain face Emmanuelle Beart) enters the shop. She needs help with her instrument. Soon she has an appointment with Maxime. Stephane observes this from a distance. Then Camille talks to Stephane about her instrument, but also about her life. Stephane is a good listener. And Camille has fallen in love with him. She is together with Maxime. She has to leave him and make an appointment with his partner. Stephane feels flattered. Yes, he desires Camille. That would be a nice ending for a French triangle story. Only Stephane doesn't stand up for Camille. He is not impotent in the physical sense. He lacks the gift to love. Claude Sautet shows this short story with great intensity. We become aware of how simple love is portrayed in the vast majority of films. And how annoying! Man meets woman. They fall in love. There is a conflict, then they reconcile. Rolltitel. But Stephane has needs that go beyond love. Needs like the convenience of staying alone. His daily routine. That counts more for him than the risk of an intimate relationship.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Easy A 

What is the morale of Easy A? Don't sleep with anyone, but tell everyone you're doing it with everyone? We have to get involved in a very American film that comes up with virginal Jesus fanatics - but above all with a tremendously likeable Emma Stone. Olive Penderghast (Stone) is an inconspicuous girl in high school. Although we are in East Ojai, California, the biggest surprise of the movie is that virginity has the highest priority at this school! Olive is ashamed to have spent the whole weekend alone at home and improvises for her best friend the tale of a date with an older student. To increase her own popularity, she crowns this story with the loss of her virginity. A seemingly sure thing, because nobody knows her one-night stand at the university. But Olive is overheard by Marianne, an honest religious classmate. She tells Olive's story all around as a warning: "Not to end like the spoiled Olive! Easy A now plays through this basic idea in different variations. Olive's parents Dill and Rosemary (Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson), who are as quirky as they are open, also find out about the news. Throughout the film they seem like Olive's strongest support, but also a bit like a parallel world from the time of the'68 revolution. There's been a lot of changes at school for Olive: She is no longer the girl that nobody notices (quite unimaginable with a beauty like Emma Stone!), but the one who has experience with sex! Olive is starting to take advantage of her popularity. Her best friend Brandon is gay. Everyone knows this and yet Brandon tries to hide it to live "normally". During a party she arranges a fake sex date for her boyfriend, so that he will also find recognition as an experienced young man in the future. It's hard to believe a gay man in California couldn't do that today! But let's just imagine this East Ojai as a place that serves primarily to make this high school comedy possible. Olive starts to lend her fictional sexuality to others: To the fat, the outsiders, those who perceive their school days as a nightmare. Thanks to Olive, they rise to men with sex experience. (Why is nobody really surprised that she only sleeps with gays and nerds?). Easy A works in itself, because we are well introduced into this East Ojai world. Overnight, Olive gains the power to improve the reputation of others and help those in need. Even the trust teacher (and wife of Olive's favorite teacher) is among her clients because she slept with a student and now suffers from chlamydia. From now on Olive borrows the "A" from Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter. Similar to the novel character, Olive will get to know the dark side of people... In the course of the plot, Olive suffers from the increasing gossip and the fact that her life is unfortunately not staged like an 80s teen comedy. Easy A, this is the first role that really suits Emma Stone! Until then they had been underestimated - wrongly so, because you can only do justice to an actor when you get the right role.