"Sieben Sommersprossen" or "Seven Freckles" is an East German German-language film from 1978, so it will soon have its 40th anniversary. The writers are Christa Kozik and Gabriele Herzog and I have to admit that i am not familiar with any of these two. But director Hermann Zschoche is among the most known and most successful filmmakers from the GDR and this 75-minute film we have here is not his only work that is still somewhat known today. Zschoche himself is in his 80s today, but is retired and has not made any new films for almost 20 years. Judging from the quality we have here, I cannot say I am too sad about that. It's a bit sad as this film had the potential to be a sweet and cute coming-of-age story I believe, but the script is just too weak to really stay memorable and the acting is only slightly better. The girl with the freckles, described in the title, is cute enough to get me interested, but the way the plot kept evolving really did not work at all, which is why I lost interest quickly. The film tries to be very natural, to depict normal teenage life (in the GDR or anywhere else) in the 1970s (maybe today too) and how a couple girls and boys are at summer camp and attraction develops between some of them. So far so good. The problem is that, very much against this realistic idea, the film has more than just a few couple of scenes and moments when it did not feel realistic or authentic at all and in my opinion this was pretty close to destroying the whole idea/project unfortunately. This is why I give this movie a thumbs-down. Not recommended and I am glad it was that short.
Review of Seven Freckles
