If you ever doubted that Germans are pretty cool about nudity, here's the final proof. This made-for-TV feature film tells the struggle of a nudist campsite in Brandenburg against the new owner, a conservative Bavarian businessman. It also tells the struggle of Jakob, the son of the campsite's spokesman, against his seemingly open and tolerant father. Nearly every actor in this film had to let his clothes fall at one point or another, some of them had to put them on for some scenes. What might be shocking to some viewers, however, turns out to be mostly harmless. There is good acting, OK dialogue and few surprises in the plot - if you don't count the unexpected use of the word "eggwarmers". Still, enough for a nice TV-evening you won't regret.
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emkarpf15 September 2009
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Horst_In_Translation4 November 2013...we would not be born without them. This is one quote from "Barfuß bis zum Hals" and nicely summarizes the overall tone of the film. There's many messages included, but it's all presented in a funny manner and here and there you hear even some great song you may have forgotten. The director is Hansjörg Thurn and the film was written by Sarah Schnier. I have not seen a lot of their other work, but i'm still positive that, even if I had, this one here would still be my favorite movie. It's really that good, definitely good enough for a cinema release and easily one of the best German television movies in recent years.
The story in short: A community of nudists lives on rented premises and as these premises were sold to a new owner, the contract needs to be renegotiated. Unfortunately, the owner is a conservative Christian from Bavaria and if that is not already enough, he also owns a fabrication company for clothes. So how can the nudists stay there? By pretending they're just a harmless sports club maybe. At least that's the path they take. Consequently, all kinds of twists and turns arise. The nudity aspect, however, even if it is a major plot-point, is really just the setting as we get to see developments in all kinds of human relationships. Boy-girl, husband-wife, father-son, father-daughter etc. All of these are pretty well-acted and this is the main reason why I thought the film was so good. And every time things got a bit more serious, the nudity parts brought some nice comic relief.
I really laughed a lot during these slightly over 90 minutes. The topic could have gotten ridiculous in a bad way pretty quickly if executed poorly, but everybody involved with the film, especially the writer, managed quality work here. It's really a hilarious comedy movie with witty dialogs or actions permanently from start to finish. I won't give any concrete examples, just check it out. In addition, I especially want to emphasize Martin Brambach's performance here. His turn in this one is perfect proof, as if any was still needed, that he's currently among Germany's finest actors. Unfortunately his fame and reputation are not half the way they should be to match his talent and versatility. The phone talk scene to his son about how he and a couple others got arrested in the GDR and were forced to get naked for humiliation reasons was the finest dramatic moment of the film. Orth's reconciliation scene with his daughter near the end was pretty good too, but it's really Brambach who's the outstanding cast member here. Such a great performance.
So yeah, if you get a hand on this movie, take your chance and watch it. It's 90 entertaining minutes and it's really difficult to say something negative about the film. I have to dig deep. Maybe that the first half was inferior compared to the second half, but this was mainly because the second half was so damn good as the facade slowly began to crumble. And better this way than the other way around. Oh I know something: A major flaw was that we didn't see the stunning Diane Willems join the nude beach culture! Just kidding. Well done for their bravery to all the actors who weren't too shy to strip completely naked as the script asked them to.