6/10
Tragic, but equally uplifting cancer tale
10 February 2015
Warning: Spoilers
"Heute bin ich blond" / "Today I am blonde" refers to a woman's uplifting approach to use a different wig every day after she lost her hair before chemotherapy for her cancer treatment. The central character is young Sophie (early 20s maybe), played by Lisa Tomaschewsky. She parties with her friends, has a one night stand, makes plans what to study etc. just like every other young woman. Then, fifteen minutes into the film, she is diagnosed with cancer. Luckily, her mother had one too many years ago and can help her with her experience. I quickly found myself engaged with the question if she can survive it or not and was delighted to see nurses and doctors seemingly competent doing a good job for her. I thought the action was written very well in this script here. Unfortunately the dialogs are not always. Looks like director Marc Rothemund has a fixation with strong young women named Sophie as he also directed the Academy Award nominee "Sophie Scholl".

The film is much better in the first half. If it had stayed that way I would probably have rated the movie 8/10. However, it feels as there just was not enough material for almost two hours. I wish they could have kept it at 90-95 minutes and cut some of the weaker scenes. This is a movie about decision making, about not letting cancer take over your life that you are really only his puppet. The wigs with different colors are just one example for that. Another would be that she decides to shave her head before all the hair falls out. We see the characters struggles as she takes the decision making one step too far and starts to drink and party heavily, which ultimately makes her health worse again. Also there is three sec scenes already before minute 70, maybe one too many in terms of credibility and overexposure. With the other terminal cancer patient in the picture (played nicely by Jasmin Gerat, the final talk scene between the two girls is heartbreakingly good), it becomes obvious that our heroine is probably gonna beat her tumor or at least that she won't lose it at the end of the film. Actually, I expected an open ending around minute 90. Death just would not have fit in with all this positively uprising ambiance from the main character. That would have been truly depressing.

As a whole, it is a good film and I recommend watching it. It can't deliver the way it did early on for almost two hours, but it's still a decent watch with a good performance from Tomaschewsky and pretty much all the other actors too. "Heute bin ich blond" is actually based on the real life story and novel from Sophie van der Stap.
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