By PETER CALDER
(Herald rating: * * * * )
German film-maker Dorrie, whose work has been little seen here outside the festival circuit, found solace in Buddhism after the sudden death of her husband, and this movie is, at its core, a homage to that religious tradition, in particular its
ideas about erasing the distinction between the self and the world.
But the film's subtext is disguised by a charming and assured comedy about two 40-something brothers whose rather different mid-life crises take them from their Munich homes to a Zen monastery in Japan. Stylistic spontaneity belies its serious intent: we reach the end sharing the film-maker's affection for her two hapless heroes and her sanguine sense that happiness is an illusion each of us is responsible for creating.
The film has a good feel for the problematic sibling relationship of Gustav (Wohler), a fussy feng shui consultant, and Uwe (Ochsenknecht), a boorish salesman who in the film's opening scenes is abandoned by his put-upon wife.
Devastated, he pesters Gustav to take him on a long-planned trip to Japan where the pair, innocents abroad in an alien land, quickly lose their money and their way.
Dorrie and cameraman Hans Karl Hu film the pair's megalopolitan nightmare with enormous visual panache, finding equal beauty in the chaotic urban topography and the ordered cloisters of the monastery which, in the film's second half, they finally reach.
Dorrie has an eye for the absurd as well: the penniless Gustav, doing a runner from a noodle bar, pauses to bow, hurriedly yet deeply, and a scene in a beer hall where the Japanese staff wear lederhosen and play alpenhorns is profoundly weird.
Despite its odd and off-putting title, this is a small, sweet and affecting film, rich in the wit of a country whose humour does not, as a rule, travel well.
Cast: Uwe Ochsenknecht, Gustav Peter Wohler
Director: Dorris Dorrie
Rating: M
Running time: 108m
Screening: Academy
