Goodbye Lenin

Reviewed by PETER CALDER

(Herald rating: * * )

A German friend of mine told me a German joke once. I didn't get it. Never mind that the juvenile story was eye-wateringly scatological, I just couldn't see where the funny bit was meant to be, and I felt like someone instructed to embark on a treasure hunt with no clues and no treasure.

Perhaps this is why this German film, which manages the considerable feat of being at once playful and tedious, failed to appeal to me, a keen student of German language and culture for more than 30 years. It's so conceptually messy and structurally flabby that it simply strains the patience.

The idea is great: in 1989, Christiane (Sass) is a devoted East German communist who collapses from shock and falls into a coma after seeing her son Alex (Bruhl) involved in a pitched battle with police on the streets.

When, eight months later, she comes round, the Wall has fallen and the world has changed. But her doctors say she must be protected from shocks so Alex, his sister Ariane (Simon) and a technically minded mate who is able to compile dummy newscasts, set about creating the Germany Christiane remembers, even though it's gone for ever.

They search out her favourite brand of vile instant coffee and fill the empty jars which once held good socialist gherkins with the capitalist version. When she glimpses a seven-storey Coca-Cola banner being unfurled on a nearby apartment they explain that Coke has acknowledged it stole the patent of an East German invention.

The drama is driven, of course, by the bleak irony that Alex is engaging in the kind of outrageous deception that characterised life in the GDR. But the film never makes up its mind whether it wants to be a farce, a political satire or a sentimental story of a young man's devotion to his mum.

The middle third is unbearably long and repetitive, and when a narrative lurch in the final act brings Alex's father into the mix, the film becomes even more thematically muddy and melodramatic.

Irritatingly and repeatedly, it defies its own internal logic. Christiane, having witnessed streets full of BMWs (the vehicles of Westerners who have defected, explain the kids) trembles with loyal glee when Alex announces that they have finally taken delivery of their own Trabant, the famously shoddy East German car that made the Lada look sleek. "And after only three years waiting," she says.

What's worse, she looks so young and in such rude good health, it's hard not to think the film would have worked better if they'd replaced her with a grandmother and brought Christiane in on the ruse.

There is a magnificent, purely cinematic sequence involving a statue of Lenin that lingers in the memory for days, but watching it I couldn't help thinking of the beautifully observed Since Otar Left, which takes the same idea of a deception driven by love and gives it some dramatic and sentimental heft. Watch out for it in this month's Showcase festivals. It underlines how Goodbye, Lenin is an opportunity missed.

Cast: Daniel Bruhl, Katrin Sass, Maria Simon, Chulpan Khamatova, Florian Lukas, Alexander Beyer, Burghart Klaussner, Michael Gwisdek

Director: Wolfgang Becker

Running time: 121 mins

Rating: M

Screening: Advance screenings this weekend Bridgeway, Rialto; opens Thursday