"Sommer in Orange" or "Mein Leben in Orange" or "My Life in Orange" is a German 110-minute film from 2011, so this one has its 5th anniversary this year. The screenplay writer is Ursula Gruber and she also wrote the story that this one is based on together with her brother Georg. The director is Marcus H. Rosenmüller, which already tells German film buffs that this is a very Bavarian film as usual for him. Given that the film is still fairly known today I am surprised that almost all the cast members are really not too well-known. I was only familiar with Friedrich and Korittke. I guess the percentage of Bavarian actors is also fairly high in here. This movie is a bit of a mix of India meets Bavaria, but I would not really say that you could call it a Bollywood film. The story is much more about the clash of Bavarian cultures and Hinduism, which is also told already by the color in the film's title.
I may be a bit biased here as Rosenmüller has never really impressed me with the works I have seen from him, but he also did not win me over with his film here. I think it worked the best when it went for comedy entirely and there was a funny and entertaining scene here and there. Sadly, it tries to be a mix of drama and most of the more serious parts don't feel too authentic and rather rushed in, such as the main character's struggles as she attempts to prove to her class-mates that she is normal and not part of some weird hippie cult what they were thinking perhaps. So I may have enjoyed this one a lot more if the focus had been almost exclusively on comedy, but Rosenmüller is known to mix comedy and drama in his films. It did not work out here. I give it a thumbs-down and one final piece of advice: Even German audiences may want to try subtitles because the Bavarian accents are sometimes pretty difficult to understand.
I may be a bit biased here as Rosenmüller has never really impressed me with the works I have seen from him, but he also did not win me over with his film here. I think it worked the best when it went for comedy entirely and there was a funny and entertaining scene here and there. Sadly, it tries to be a mix of drama and most of the more serious parts don't feel too authentic and rather rushed in, such as the main character's struggles as she attempts to prove to her class-mates that she is normal and not part of some weird hippie cult what they were thinking perhaps. So I may have enjoyed this one a lot more if the focus had been almost exclusively on comedy, but Rosenmüller is known to mix comedy and drama in his films. It did not work out here. I give it a thumbs-down and one final piece of advice: Even German audiences may want to try subtitles because the Bavarian accents are sometimes pretty difficult to understand.
