"Zwei Seiten der Liebe" is a German television film and the title basically means "Two sides of love". Not the best title choice, but also not terribly bad. This film is from 2002, so it will have its 20th anniversary next year. In September 2022 to be precise, so slightly over 1.5 years to go. Probably less if you show up later here, which is pretty likely or maybe the anniversary happened already. In any case, this film is still on national television here and there and given the age as well as the quality, or lack thereof, there is absolutely no justification for that. Even if it is shown in the middle of the night as it was today. The director is Bodo Fürneisen. He turned 70 last year, so he was already over 50 too when he made this film here. Pretty experienced as he began making films back in the late 1970s, so with this one here already in the industry for the quarter of a century. Long time. Even more shocking to see his level is still so low, even if the writer is probably more to blame than the director in cases like this. I will get to her in a second. With the exception of the fairytales he directed, his body of work is also nothing to be truly proud of, especially the other films like this one here he made early in the new millennium. One solid aspect about him is, however, that he managed a career in reunited Germany as he launched his career in the GDR and this is where the first ten years of his job took place. Now the writer: This would be Marlies Ewald and she has worked with Fürneisen on other occasions too, also started writing back in the 1980s, so pretty prolific. The only somewhat positive thing about her career is the Frau Holle movie pretty much. The quantity of Rosamunde Pilcher adaptations, Das Traumschiff and more films as bad as this one make it impossible for me to respect her as a somewhat serious writer. So the basics here are pretty bad in terms those in charge in key positions from the crew. The outcome is accordingly.
This obviously also has to do with this being an ARD Degeto production together with Regina Ziegler. There, really the two worst companies in the history of German television (films) collaborated you could say. What Degeto came up with since 2000 is really so abysmal that I have no words for that because the ones who paid for it all were the Germans who were forced to pay GEZ, so these absolutely low-quality movies could get made. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe. I applaud everybody who sees through this charade. Especially females because they are the ones that these films were made for mostly. Take lead actress Thekla Carola Wied. She has been in really many of these Degeto films and I think she is not even a remotely talented actress. Admittedly, this film here is probably not her very worst performance and her crying scene early on did not look as bad as I would have expected. Still, she does not have 10% of the range required to portray a strong female character. It's all make-believe, also with this film. There are more familiar faces here. Seeing a pretty talented actor like Zischler in a film like this is also a bit sad. Good though that he managed to play parts in stuff like Munich later on, which happened not too long after this film. He had no real purpose in this film here anyway, except crushing on the "amazing" female protagonist and making out with her, while of course Wied's character is undecided and keeps her distance because she does not need men to be happy. Austrian actor Heikko Deutschmann was the male lead in here. Kinda funny name given his origins and really unusual to see this variation of the name Heiko. Anyway, his character was of course really likable, but if he is a good actor I am not sure either. And the pretty young Fritz Karl is in this film too and he turns out to be the key antagonist eventually. I will get to that a little later maybe. That's pretty much it in terms of really familiar faces from the cast. The one who plays the husband early on I was not familiar with.
So what is wrong with this film? Let's start with a short summary. We have a married couple, a bit older already, and find out that the husband dies in a car accident. Then we find out that the husband had a (not so) secret affair with another man and this man enter the late man's wife's life eventually in a bigger way then we expected. After initial anger and frustration from her side, the two become pretty close buddies. This is admittedly also fairly absurd, so a huge challenge to make it seem credible and here they definitely came short. Instead they threw in one dramatic addition after the next. The male protagonist also has a serious illness and we are led to believe it could be HIV. Which it is not eventually of course. Because if it was, it would show us that the male protagonist was on a ruthless side, but this is not the case of course. He is 100% kind. This film does not have any shades at all. There are good guys and bad guys and the protagonist whose relationship with the gay fella shows us that she is just hurt and not really a homophobe as we could have thought early on when she finds out about the relationship. The daughter of the elderly couple by the way also knew about this relationship of course, so this is why the affair was not so secret. If you could even call it an affair with for how long it went. The bad guys here are the characters portrayed by Karl and Gläser. They work in the female protagonist's company and have no respect for the protagonist. Ageism is included with Gläser's especially how he talks to the woman and also there is one cringeworthy phone call to Wied's character, in which she adds more to that pretty simple-minded story line. As for Karl's he magically also knows about the sexual orientation of the male protagonist. So these bizarre work struggles also happen at the exact same time like everything else. Speaking of those, the two bad guys are of course gone in the end because these films always have incredibly exaggerated happy endings. This moment when Karl's character is fired, was another prime example of allegedly strong female characters (the daughter as well) that in reality are nothing but shallow writing with how full of themselves they are there. And Zischler's character is reinstalled as if nothing happened.
Now to Deutschmann's character here: He deserves his own paragraph. Finding out he is a lawyer and seeing him in this scene where he defends the gay fella who got discriminated against was embarrassing. It almost felt like Philadelphia gone completely wrong and looking at his that film was not even a decade old back in 2002, it surely was no coincidence. They even took it to the next level because Denzel Washington's character was not gay if I remember correctly. What else about his character? Oh yes, his super serious illness there and the nonsense explanation that he does not want an operation that of course he changes his mind on at the very end. Why? Because his buddy, the one he defended in court I think, successfully of course, had died all of a sudden. And also the date for the operation two days later was also there already. Sure thing. Not as if it takes any time to fit in the doctors' schedule or something. Also how briefly before that he had already sold the apartment, another cloak-and-dagger operation as they say. In German, we say "night-and-fog" and I think I like that more. Anyway, during these rushed-in inclusions, it becomes painfully obvious how much they were struggling with storytelling overall here. There were also strange individual moments here and there. For example how Wied's character hugs her gay friend so closely from behind near the end when he shows up to tell her about his deceased buddy and the upcoming operation. How early on, the daughter had to leave repeatedly quickly to Chicago to catch her flight was a bit like a running gag, even if they were as serious with that as with everything else. And this was probably the film's biggest problem. You could literally feel the filmmaker's and cast's ambition to come up with a really touching drama movie here, but the outcome is so void of talent and quality whatsoever, that it all feels utterly cringeworthy.
That is already a fairly solid statement to end the review, but I'm not done yet. I could probably list at least half a dozen other occasions during which this film sucked considerably in terms of scenes, moments, dialogues etc., but the character limit is approaching, so I will not say too much anymore. The soundtrack was also as bad and cringeworthy as it is almost always with Degeto/Ziegler production. One example for that were the moments before the deadly car accident early on. Their perception of dramatic music there and how they were blasting it into our ears on this and other occasions was just embarrassing. As if they were blasting away the lack of authenticity and realism. Well, trying to. But yes, subtlety was not exactly the filmmakers' strength here. This also applies to the somewhat deep moments like how very early they talk about always being honest and that they will have 25 more years with each other and how reality got in the way then. But the worst about it all were probably Wied's character's depictions of what a great woman she is. Super successful daughter that works abroad, her man would not leave her for another guy, she fires the villain and the other dude, she would have easily found a new job with her creativity, she won't be put down by nobody etc. I wish the actress only had 10% of the class her character had in this movie. Or at least what they wanted us to believe she has in this movie. It is unwatchable when also when this kind-hearted woman makes sure nobody loses their job at the end (the applause.. so cringe) or her suffering after she finds out about the affair or how the two leads are at the same time visiting the grave and there is only one verdict: Skip 100%. Terrible film.
This obviously also has to do with this being an ARD Degeto production together with Regina Ziegler. There, really the two worst companies in the history of German television (films) collaborated you could say. What Degeto came up with since 2000 is really so abysmal that I have no words for that because the ones who paid for it all were the Germans who were forced to pay GEZ, so these absolutely low-quality movies could get made. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe. I applaud everybody who sees through this charade. Especially females because they are the ones that these films were made for mostly. Take lead actress Thekla Carola Wied. She has been in really many of these Degeto films and I think she is not even a remotely talented actress. Admittedly, this film here is probably not her very worst performance and her crying scene early on did not look as bad as I would have expected. Still, she does not have 10% of the range required to portray a strong female character. It's all make-believe, also with this film. There are more familiar faces here. Seeing a pretty talented actor like Zischler in a film like this is also a bit sad. Good though that he managed to play parts in stuff like Munich later on, which happened not too long after this film. He had no real purpose in this film here anyway, except crushing on the "amazing" female protagonist and making out with her, while of course Wied's character is undecided and keeps her distance because she does not need men to be happy. Austrian actor Heikko Deutschmann was the male lead in here. Kinda funny name given his origins and really unusual to see this variation of the name Heiko. Anyway, his character was of course really likable, but if he is a good actor I am not sure either. And the pretty young Fritz Karl is in this film too and he turns out to be the key antagonist eventually. I will get to that a little later maybe. That's pretty much it in terms of really familiar faces from the cast. The one who plays the husband early on I was not familiar with.
So what is wrong with this film? Let's start with a short summary. We have a married couple, a bit older already, and find out that the husband dies in a car accident. Then we find out that the husband had a (not so) secret affair with another man and this man enter the late man's wife's life eventually in a bigger way then we expected. After initial anger and frustration from her side, the two become pretty close buddies. This is admittedly also fairly absurd, so a huge challenge to make it seem credible and here they definitely came short. Instead they threw in one dramatic addition after the next. The male protagonist also has a serious illness and we are led to believe it could be HIV. Which it is not eventually of course. Because if it was, it would show us that the male protagonist was on a ruthless side, but this is not the case of course. He is 100% kind. This film does not have any shades at all. There are good guys and bad guys and the protagonist whose relationship with the gay fella shows us that she is just hurt and not really a homophobe as we could have thought early on when she finds out about the relationship. The daughter of the elderly couple by the way also knew about this relationship of course, so this is why the affair was not so secret. If you could even call it an affair with for how long it went. The bad guys here are the characters portrayed by Karl and Gläser. They work in the female protagonist's company and have no respect for the protagonist. Ageism is included with Gläser's especially how he talks to the woman and also there is one cringeworthy phone call to Wied's character, in which she adds more to that pretty simple-minded story line. As for Karl's he magically also knows about the sexual orientation of the male protagonist. So these bizarre work struggles also happen at the exact same time like everything else. Speaking of those, the two bad guys are of course gone in the end because these films always have incredibly exaggerated happy endings. This moment when Karl's character is fired, was another prime example of allegedly strong female characters (the daughter as well) that in reality are nothing but shallow writing with how full of themselves they are there. And Zischler's character is reinstalled as if nothing happened.
Now to Deutschmann's character here: He deserves his own paragraph. Finding out he is a lawyer and seeing him in this scene where he defends the gay fella who got discriminated against was embarrassing. It almost felt like Philadelphia gone completely wrong and looking at his that film was not even a decade old back in 2002, it surely was no coincidence. They even took it to the next level because Denzel Washington's character was not gay if I remember correctly. What else about his character? Oh yes, his super serious illness there and the nonsense explanation that he does not want an operation that of course he changes his mind on at the very end. Why? Because his buddy, the one he defended in court I think, successfully of course, had died all of a sudden. And also the date for the operation two days later was also there already. Sure thing. Not as if it takes any time to fit in the doctors' schedule or something. Also how briefly before that he had already sold the apartment, another cloak-and-dagger operation as they say. In German, we say "night-and-fog" and I think I like that more. Anyway, during these rushed-in inclusions, it becomes painfully obvious how much they were struggling with storytelling overall here. There were also strange individual moments here and there. For example how Wied's character hugs her gay friend so closely from behind near the end when he shows up to tell her about his deceased buddy and the upcoming operation. How early on, the daughter had to leave repeatedly quickly to Chicago to catch her flight was a bit like a running gag, even if they were as serious with that as with everything else. And this was probably the film's biggest problem. You could literally feel the filmmaker's and cast's ambition to come up with a really touching drama movie here, but the outcome is so void of talent and quality whatsoever, that it all feels utterly cringeworthy.
That is already a fairly solid statement to end the review, but I'm not done yet. I could probably list at least half a dozen other occasions during which this film sucked considerably in terms of scenes, moments, dialogues etc., but the character limit is approaching, so I will not say too much anymore. The soundtrack was also as bad and cringeworthy as it is almost always with Degeto/Ziegler production. One example for that were the moments before the deadly car accident early on. Their perception of dramatic music there and how they were blasting it into our ears on this and other occasions was just embarrassing. As if they were blasting away the lack of authenticity and realism. Well, trying to. But yes, subtlety was not exactly the filmmakers' strength here. This also applies to the somewhat deep moments like how very early they talk about always being honest and that they will have 25 more years with each other and how reality got in the way then. But the worst about it all were probably Wied's character's depictions of what a great woman she is. Super successful daughter that works abroad, her man would not leave her for another guy, she fires the villain and the other dude, she would have easily found a new job with her creativity, she won't be put down by nobody etc. I wish the actress only had 10% of the class her character had in this movie. Or at least what they wanted us to believe she has in this movie. It is unwatchable when also when this kind-hearted woman makes sure nobody loses their job at the end (the applause.. so cringe) or her suffering after she finds out about the affair or how the two leads are at the same time visiting the grave and there is only one verdict: Skip 100%. Terrible film.
