I love chamber dramas in general. And being German, I also had a fair share of German films in my life, both good and bad. On top of that, I also like Daniel Brühl as an actor, so I was curious about his directorial debut.
Unfortunately, this movie gave me close to nothing. The story is simple: Daniel, playing a version himself, is headed for the airport to get to an important audition in London, but makes a last stop in a bar in his neighbourhood for a coffee. There, he meets a neighbour who turns out to be not only curious, but impertinently nosy about Daniel's life and family. He reveals bit after bit what he knows about the secrets of Daniel and his wife. Practically the whole story is based on the dialogue in this bar.
But unfortunately, despite the effort, both the story and the characters appear hollow and unbelievable. The Berliners are so redundantly chliché, it starts to hurt (the drunken guest, the bartender). Daniel is so utterly full of himself, arrogant and aggressive like a boy with rich parents at the height of his puberty. The story of how his neighbour attained all his clues and knowledge is far-fetched like a conspiracy theory, and his motives remain unknown until the end. Daniel's wife, in their phone calls, sounds as distant and impersonal as it gets, as if she arrived on the set half an hour before shooting the movie. There is not even a satisfying conclusio in the end.
To me, it seemed like Daniel wanted to make a film for the sake of art and sophistication, but ended up with a watery idea of a typical German movie.