In this month of celebrating love, relationships and the quality of grocery store-bought chocolate, a film centered around romance in one of the most beautiful and culturally enriched cities of the world sounds like ideal viewing. The Cities of Love Franchise started several years ago with Paris Je T'aime (2006), and its intentions were as clear as one can be on a first date. Create a film that centers around a specific city around the world, bring together a group of talented and diverse directors, writers and actors to produce several short vignettes set around this beautiful city and illustrate not only the power of the scenery but the unique power of love itself. These films act as a love letter to the cities in which they are set. Subsequent entries following the first endeavor in Paris have had varying success in achieving these cinematic goals, but none seems to have failed in the way Berlin, I Love You (2019) has. For a film that has been in pre-production for almost five years, it is incredible how underdeveloped and underwhelming the film comes off as. While its star-power both behind and in front of the camera may not match that of previous entries in the franchise, this is no excuse for the end results, which border on offensive depictions of a city that has already experienced enough tragedy. The ten segments which populate the film range from mildly interesting to inexplicable misfires in cinematic storytelling. Furthermore, the film hardly makes any real attempt to get the audience to fall in love with the city itself, showing the occasional historical landmark or picturesque landscape as a backdrop to one of its subpar shorts. If it doesn't let me enjoy the stories, at least let me enjoy Berlin!
It should be noted that while previous entries have contained entire segments spoken in the native language of the region in which they are set (with subtitles provided of course) Berlin, I Love You has only a handful of moments in which any character speaks German and few of those moments are even related to the main plot that the narrative is currently following at the time. Because of this, we often find native Germans speaking English to one another in thick accents for no discernable reason other than to convenience other actors and English-speaking audience members. Secondly, a majority of the film's segments follow the journey of foreigners, rather than those who live in Berlin and consider it their home. While the thought of watching a character experience and fall in love with a city for the first time is a lovely notion, most of these tourist wannabes are undeniably boring. In "Berlin Dance" Jenna Tatum plays an unengaging tourist who performs an unengaging (and distinctly non-German) dance with a street performer who, yes you guessed it is just as unengaging as her. Their characters and arcs serve no feasible purpose other than to add some familiar faces to the film's roster and take up running time. None of it serves any of the intentions listed in the franchise's manifesto above. Other segments like "Love is in the Air" (disturbing on multiple levels) and "Lucinda in Berlin" (cute, but ultimately hollow) similarly fail at presenting us with stories and characters that feel exclusive to the city. These short films could honestly be set anywhere around the world. Aimlessness becomes the norm throughout the movie to the point that you are just grateful to hear some tiny reference to the infamous Berlin Wall.
The one segment that contains some semblance of gravitas not surprisingly features two of the biggest names in the cast, Helen Mirren and Keira Knightley. "Under Your Feet" deals with a different sort of love, their segment tackles the subject of the ongoing immigration crisis in Germany. Knightley's character works at a refugee center and brings home a little boy to spend the night, much to the chagrin of her xenophobic mother (Mirren). The segment is a bit quick to the punch in terms of Mirren's character having an emotional epiphany not only on the boy, but on her relationship with her daughter, but unlike so many of the other shorts, this one actually feels as though it has something relevant and meaningful to say. It is the grounded performances from these two fine actresses (and the young boy) that allow the segment to be the best of the bunch. While it is a little odd that the immigration crisis is being seen through the eyes of other foreigners (they are not from Berlin) this segment offers a tiny glimpse at the admirable motivations once behind these ambitious film projects. Sometimes that most beautiful love is that which we selflessly give to strangers as well as to the ones we love.
Other segments attempt to be relevant only to crumble under the weight of the responsibility to a substance. "Me Three" is a feminist flop in which a group of women discuss misogyny and harassment in a late-night laundry shop. Their perspectives are so one-dimensional and their evolutions as characters so erratic and unconvincing that scenes like this make more of a mockery out of the feminist movement than celebrate the advances it has made in the last several years. A similar mockery occurs in "Sunday Morning" a segment in which cis-gendered actor, Diego Luna portrays a transgender woman who catches the eye of a sexually questioning sixteen-year-old boy on his birthday. He wants to know what it is like to kiss a boy, and despite her insistence that she is not a boy, she gives him what he wants. Aside from the fact that cis-gender actors should NOT be portraying transgender characters, the entire scene just feels tonally wrong and a missed opportunity in what could've been a thought-provoking dialogue not just between the characters, but between the film and its audience as well. It is scenes like these that make you wonder what the current intentions of the franchise truly are if any? Have they in fact strayed since that trip to Paris in 2006? Does it want us to fall in love with a city, its history and its potential to sow love and romance into its war-torn roads or much like a crumbled up tourist guide lying beside a garbage can, is it just trying to sell us the cheap goods, the false experience? Recent entries seem to have leaned toward the latter, but I still hold some hope in my heart because at the end of the day the old phrase still rings true, "Cinema, I Love You."
PS - The end credits tease that LA is the next destination so at least that should save most of the talent travel fare.
