Dietmar Moessmer Movies

With his bittersweet, German-language tragicomedy The Elementary Particles, writer-director Oskar Roehler brings to the screen Michel Houellebecq's popular seriocomic novel of two ill-adjusted siblings. Christian Ullmen and Moritz Bleibtreu portray, respectively, Michael and Bruno, half brothers who have each adjusted poorly to adult life, thanks in no small part to a cracked upbringing by their eccentric, social dropout mother. As the story opens, each brother experiences a personal crisis. Geneticist Michael returns to his work in cloning after an extended period away from his Irish laboratory, but suffers in quiet desperation from his intense inner loneliness; he must soon leave the lab once again and head back to his hometown, where his grandmother's corpse is being disinterred from a cemetery. Upon arrival, he reencounters Annabelle (Franka Potente of Run Lola Run), an adolescent crush to whom he was never before able to express his romantic yearnings; they consummate an intense erotic affair, and remain together, but a troubled pregnancy renders her infertile and makes family conception an utter impossibility. Meanwhile, high school teacher Bruno (a married husband and father) is driven completely around the bend by sexual yearnings for his female students, and consequently suffers from a nervous breakdown; he checks himself into a sanitarium, then heads off on a bender at a swingers' retreat with a new lover, Christiane (Martina Gedeck) - but their pleasure is all too short-lived. Nina Hoss and Uwe Ochsenknecht co-star. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

Using two parallel stories, this drama explores the reconstruction of Germany after the Second World war. To what extend did the lessons of the war sink in? In the story, an idealistic cameraman and his more worldly friend, a movie director, have hidden their old equipment until it is safe to use it again. Finally, the war is over, and movies are being made again. The director is willing to make popular entertainments, but his friend the cameraman has a yen to make something more socially relevant, commenting on the evils of the Hitler regime. Curiously, though they come to a parting of the ways, it comes over a woman they have both falling in love with, rather than these weighty issues. In the parallel story, a former soldier in the Reich's armies has been discharged and has returned to his home town and his old job as projectionist at the local movie theater. He and the others experience some difficulty with the occupying forces, especially with the dark-skinned Moroccans, but as soon as they can, they settle down into their old lives - including their prewar prejudices. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi