Can a movie rescue two film-studio lovers who are separated by geopolitics? This crowdpleasing German romantic drama tells the tale
This German romantic drama – a handsome commercial for Studio Babelsberg, near Berlin, the world’s oldest major film studio, as well as for cinephilia in general – cheekily suggests that any dude off the street could direct a movie.
Strapping Dennis Mojen is Emil, a feckless East German soldier who, in 1961, is trying to blag work at what was then the state-owned DEFA studio. He stumbles into sassy dancer Milou (Emilia Schüle), a stand-in for a big French diva currently in residence. Sparks are starting to fly when the Soviets throw a geopolitical hissy fit and – very rude of them – sunder the lovebirds with the Berlin Wall. Not so much The Lives of Others as The Lives of Extras.