Summer 04 tells the story of 12 year old Livia (Svea Lohde) who is staying with her boyfriend Nils (Lucas Kotaranin) and his parents Andre (Peter Davor) and Mirjam (Martina Gedeck) while her parents vacation in Mexico. As the film opens Livia has been out sailing with older man (I'd say mid 30s) Bill (Robert Seeliger) who she has just met while out with Nils. Nils has not gone with her and apparently does not mind and Livia will spend more time alone with Bill. Mirjam thinks this is a bit inappropriate and confronts Bill about it. Despite more or less accusing him of being a paedophile, Mirjam decides to go out boating alone with Bill while Andre goes out alone with Livia. (Nils again has decided to stay at home). Strangely Andre does not seem to find that his wife is going out alone with a younger man. From there the plot just gets more convoluted and confusing.
The real problem with this film is that the characters motivations don't make sense. Ultimately this film is building up to a twist of sorts and the writer and director seem intent on reaching that point irrespective of how much logic there is in the journey to get there makes. This is director Stefan Krohmer's first feature film and his inexperience really shows. There are whole scenes with little or no point. One scene must lead up to Andre driving past Nils who is on a bike. To get there we go on a journey with Andre to the local recycling station where we see him painstakingly sorting out all his recyclables before getting back in the car and finally driving up to Nils. Did we really need all of that? I really can not recommend this film at all. It's disjointed, jumps around and for most part is just boring and worse, confusing. 3/10.
The real problem with this film is that the characters motivations don't make sense. Ultimately this film is building up to a twist of sorts and the writer and director seem intent on reaching that point irrespective of how much logic there is in the journey to get there makes. This is director Stefan Krohmer's first feature film and his inexperience really shows. There are whole scenes with little or no point. One scene must lead up to Andre driving past Nils who is on a bike. To get there we go on a journey with Andre to the local recycling station where we see him painstakingly sorting out all his recyclables before getting back in the car and finally driving up to Nils. Did we really need all of that? I really can not recommend this film at all. It's disjointed, jumps around and for most part is just boring and worse, confusing. 3/10.