Sindre Kaspersen German director Maren Ade's minimalistic chamber drama tells the story of Chris and Gitti, an urbane couple in their 30s who spends their holiday at Chris' parent's summer house in Sardinia. She is a PR consultant at a record company, he is an architect, and they trust their compatibility until they befriend another couple, and the comparison begins.Maren Ade's dialog-driven and colorful depiction of the relationship between extrovert joy-spreader Eva and reserved idealist Chris, gives an observant image of the affects personality differences can have on a rather fertile romantic relationship. Birgit Minichmayr and Lars Eidinger's unrestrained and authentic interpretations of the quarrelsome lovebirds who becomes clouded by the shadow of doubt upon meeting a steadier and more established couple, makes this hot and picturesque contemporary romance an atypical and thoughtful movie experience.

zetes A young German couple is on a business/vacation trip in Sardinia. They don't much like each other. They pretty much argue and snipe at each other constantly. They probably, in fact, should just get a divorce. Oh, wait: they're not married. So why the Hell are they even together? These two people just need to move the Hell on. The film really does understand its characters quite intimately, and the lead actors (Birgit Minichmayr and Lars Eidinger) are good, but so what? These people are just not worth caring about or observing in any way whatsoever. The movie moves very slowly and is basically the equivalent of hanging out with horrible people for a very, very long two hours. Terrible.

tod3058 I'm going to keep this fairly short and sweet, which is not what the Director decided to do in this film. A long and laboring film about a couple who appear to have just met, but turns out are in a long term relationship, and have clear issues with each other and the wider world. All of the characters were unlikable, unbelievable and unpleasant. The redeeming feature should be the cinematography, but that is ruined by the Directors inability to edit the shots down. Uncomfortably long and voyeuristic sex scenes coupled with long silent pauses within conversations, which are painfully obvious there to portray the awkwardness between characters, add to audiences torture. I didn't like nor care for the characters and I was desperate for the Director to put me out of my misery and end this film. It finally did and I was happy. With some discipline, good actors and story this Director could achieve something watchable but unfortunately they didn't here.

tomvonloguenewth this is a most remarkable film. not a great one, perhaps, but an exceptionally finely-judged dissection of a relationship that almost outdoes scenes from a marriage. it's pretty low-key, but every single scene has at least one point of tension, ranging from tiny to quite small, in the relationship between the protagonists, and some a few between the supporting couple thrown in for good measure. the cumulative effect is extremely affecting. achieved through excellence of writing and acting, it's not obscurely subtle and did lead me to wonder if a couple of the other commencer's had actually had a relationship with anyone at all not to be at least partially engaged. it's not for me to speculate here. i would add also, in light of other comments that i found the gender focus to be fairly balanced, which i gather was a concern during production. chris is given a far greater inner life than gitti, and if she is a borderline psych case then so are many other girls who simply want some attention from a slightly hidebound, professionally insecure intellectual whose lone thoughts tend to his self rather than theirs. i only wish there had been more on what attracted the couple to one another in the first place, to make more specific sense of the breakdown, and would have appreciated the relationship's decline being a little less inexorable. but acting and writing are impeccable, and direction very well-paced (including the "nothing happens" bits which are far less frequent than other comments would suggest) and so unflashy that it is probably far better than i appreciated on a single viewing. exceptionally well-observed in detail and not cheerful viewing, and perhaps a little too bleak; the ending hints at happiness - and the lack of resolution is a bit annoying, but appreciated for sparing the who's-afraid-of-virginia-woolf territory that would undoubtedly follow - but it's an exceptionally instructive lesson in how not to take care of the details in a relationship.