***Spoilers***
The movie's basic pitch is that two brothers who have been split up when they were teenagers have to reconcile decades later on their mother's grave. Yet there is a sub-plot that their offspring (Jacky's daughter Jana and Schmuel's son Jakob, respectively) have once, ten years ago, been lovers. Howzat?
I suppose, there may have been a family reunion after the fall of the wall, with our without the brothers. Many german families visited at least once their relations in the other part of Germany in those days, but surely not everybody stayed in contact.
shareMany thanks for your reply -- I was starting to feel a bit lonely here. Yeah, your hypthesis does make sense, although it still leaves a bit of a gap in the story line. Plus the film seems to assume that it's natural for cousins to get it off with one another. Which somehow creates an image I wouldn't wish on Germany ...
shareI hadn't noticed, but that sure isn't much explained and seems to come out of nowhere...
At first, when thinking about it, my idea was: you gotta recollect something: Jana and her father don't get along great, and they didn't see each other much since she's quitted practicing hurdles...
...but that was because she was already pregnant. So my point is useless, I just noticed, sorry.
But I'm still posting it to make this comment board on that nice movie more lively :)
i, too, thought this made no sense (not to mention a little weird on the first-cousins thing too). i am not sure what the director was trying to do with this whole subplot of the movie, unless it was to skeeve out the audience. otherwise, i thought it was a brilliant and hilarious film about family relationships and the East/West cultural divide that still exists in reunified germany.
share