A “sex driving license” so, the idea is well received by the public. The woman on stage imagines it with a theoretical and practical test, something like this: The man is just undoing his pants – bang, first a few questions: “Where are my erogenous zones? Where is the G-spot? And how how long does a woman’s menstrual cycle last? Hm?”
The performer on stage is, who would have thought it, a feminist, a really tough one, with a book on the subject of “emasculation” under her pillow. Her name is Frieda and she will crack the heart of the most desirable of all men in Anika Decker’s film “Liebesdings”. It also has the task of providing the didactic added value that softens the hearts of German film funding decision-makers. So it is – hopefully only fictitious – quite a bit of unpaid female labor in this feminist romantic comedy, which aims to explain to the general German audience why it shouldn’t be afraid of feminism. We learn: Feminism, that is Frieda as its embodiment, only wants to be loved and touched immorally in the right places. And in the end there’s a happy ending, hooray.
It’s not implemented so stupidly on film: the fact that the female lead in the film is professionally conducting humorous public education on feminist issues in a small backyard theater saves the film from the otherwise threatening messing around. Director Anika Decker, who also wrote the screenplay, would otherwise have had to bake the enlightenment into the film and its dialogues as a whole. The characters would suddenly have had to give presentations on gender in suitable – or probably only half-suitable – situations. A man should have lit a fag in bed and farted after copulation to show how macho men are. Kind of.
The actors seem really nice, you like to watch them fall in love
It would have been a very stupid film, just as there are many stupid films with good intentions for this very reason. “Love Things” is not a stupid movie. A good or even great film, however, would have managed not to make its message seem like one – namely by converting it into a narrative, distilling something out of it. Such a film isn’t “Liebesdings” either. So let’s say he’s nice. Not in the sense of “quite nice”, but in the sense of: the actors seem really nice, you like to watch them fall in love.
There is also plenty of room for that. Because feminism has its own small theater stage and is in good hands there, it doesn’t interfere too much with the core of the totally conventional love story: A beautiful woman acts cheeky and unattainable, then a rich man falls in love with her – with this one Case of a movie star with women lying at his feet, played by one Elyas M’Barek in the state of progressive Georgeclooneysis. His cuteness is far from being told.
Sex license question: What do you call a society where men are rich and women are poor but sexy? Begins with P.
love things, Germany 2022 – director and script: Anika Decker. With: Elyas M’Barek, Lucie Heinze, Peri Baumeister, Alexandra Maria Lara, Maren Kroymann, Anna Thalbach. Constantine, 99 minutes. Theatrical release: July 7, 2022.