Westler (1985)
Felix from West-Berlin falls in love with Thomas in East-Berlin. At first they keep their relationship going by regular visits from Felix, but the curfew forces him to return every evening. When the East-German authorities become suspicious, Thomas decides to try and flee to the West.
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Pretty Good
I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.
Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast
Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable
First - the good things about the film. Nice blond Rainer Strecker's character seems a good representative of East Berlinean gay archetype in the 1980s :) Some of the GDR tokens - Nina Hagen, obligatory military service for men, the Baltic for a week off, Prague over weekend, signs in Russian every now and then - will definitely make some modern Germans nostalgic... That country is gone for good - or for bad :) Now the actual critique. The good, albeit trite, collision - love across the barb wire ("why can't we two simply live together") deteriorates as the film reels. Poor "pseudo-documentary" script. Strained story-telling. Awful MIDI-synthesizer soundtrack. Far from best use of 90 minutes' screen time. Obtrusive exploitation of how-bad-communism-is type of details. Was this meant to be a propaganda film? Recommend to watch something else. If you are looking for films on GDR - there are better ones, try e.g. "Nowhere to go" (Die Unberuehrbare)
I bought the VHS (thank God I didn't spend money on the more expensive DVD) of this movie, as it was being advertised as THE German gay classic. I was very disappointed. Although the idea of the story is great (young man from West- Berlin falls in love with young man from East- Berlin, the wall makes their romance complicated) and all the actors are trying as hard as they can, the movie lacks some serious story-telling capabilities on the director's side. A script is basically non-existent, the musical score is terrible and even "non-candid camera" shots in West- Berlin are terribly photographed. Thumbs up for candid camera shots of every-day life in 1985's East- Berlin and sneaking into a gay bar in communist Germany and for performances by the actors playing the couple. But NOT a must-see.
The movie has its values in itself, but after Germany's reunification, it also has become a kind of historical value. It can tell us never to allow again walls to be built between us!
Two men live only a few kilometers apart, and yet it is almost as if they are from different worlds -- East Berlin and West Berlin. Their blossoming romance is doomed by the Wall that separates their worlds, so they must savor the few moments they can share.