Silent Youth *** (2012, Martin Bruchmann, Josef Mattes, Linda Schüle, Mathias Neuber) – Classic Movie Review 12,328

Writer/ director Diemo Kemmesies’s German gay drama film Silent Youth is an edgy spin on the classic coming out story, all about what will be hard to remember later, or what you may prefer to forget, mainly the screaming silence through not knowing what to say. Silent Youth is harsh, jagged-edged and alienating, but somehow it pulls you in and swings you round to its side. It’s the reality check it offers. It makes you understand the two guys in question, and eventually come round to quite like them, at least marginally, and see what they might see in each other. It also offers a tour of bits of Berlin tourists are very unlikely to see, so that keeps it fresh too.

Martin Bruchmann plays introverted young Marlo, who comes from Lubeck to stay with a doomy young woman friend, Franzi (Linda Schüle), in Berlin and immediately sets off for a gloomy, lonely long walk in the streets, encountering and then following young Kirill (Josef Mattes), whose face is bashed up and he is wearing a hood. You’d have to be crazy to follow this guy and cruise him. Or desperate. It turns out Marlo in new to the game, yes and lonely and desperate, and maybe a bit crazy, but on the controlled and calm side of crazy. Kirill is lonely and desperate, and a bit crazy, but on the uncontrolled and uncalm side of crazy.

Both guys are somehow battling homophobia, and several other issues in their lives. Marlo is new to gay experience, but seems very cool about it all, while Kirill has mental health issues, following a couple of really bad recent incidents in his life. Most of the time, they can hardly look at each other in the eye. They are misfits but dreamers, and tentatively become lovers. The same but kinda different. But they are somehow two peas in the same pod. This is their love story. Incredibly, the two peas have found their pod.

[Spoiler alert] Yet the film plays like a horror story. Marlo makes some mad decisions. He even gets in a car with Kirill and a middle aged complete stranger driver. He drives them to a closed airport and they walk along the runway! You keep expecting something absolutely terrible to happen. But it doesn’t. Actually, nothing much happens really. Just a lot of awkward pauses and silence. And then, when you least expect it, there’s some kind of happy ending, or at least notes towards s hopeful one.

Kudos to writer/ director Diemo Kemmesies and his two main actors Martin Bruchmann and Josef Mattes, and support cast of just two Linda Schüle as Franzi and Mathias Neuber as Kirill’s uncommunicative father.

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 12,328

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