Painful to watch - for all the wrong reasons
From the opening scene to the last second when Franco turns his gaze to the camera, the whole movie was full of:
1) Horrible, dreadful screenplay... If you decide to watch the movie until the end, then you'll have loads of empty time meanwhile to think if it was a conscious choice to make it like this. Is it perhaps an alienating effect that contributes to what the film has to say? But no, no...
2) Terrible acting. Gainsbourg included. The actors seem totally unconvinced as to why they're saying the things that they're saying. For the most part, you can read from their faces, "how the hell did I get involved in this?"
3) Ok if we're not gonna have any good dialogue, nor insightful character studies, at least we should have some plot right? But no... The plot moves with time jumps, and then the characters have to literally explain what happened meanwhile ("I'm so glad we're moving after 4 years", "I had a very hard time these past last months to get over the things that happened", "Oh look my hands are shaking, that means that I'm really disturbed with what I just witnessed, why are you not like that? why are you always reasonable and robot like?") The plot moves, and you're left with "so what?!" feeling every time... It's as if you're being recited boring life events of someone you never knew and couldn't care less about. All in the most monotonous way imaginable. Or unimaginable, because it kills any form of imagery a person has.
This is as superficial as any film ever gets. I don't even know if "unconvincing" is a good word to rate the film elements I listed above, because the whole thing just felt hollow and painfully careless. It was like a test of patience, ending with Wenders grinning shamelessly into your face through Franco. And even then it's not an "in your face" kind of political thing either. Big disappointment.
Patrick Watson's music at the concert scene and maybe some of the photography were the only good things in this.