Love in Thoughts (2004)

Paul (played by Daniel Brühl) and Günther (played by August Diehl) are school chums and best friends in 1927 Weimar Germany. Günther is gay and Paul is straight but has never slept with a woman. The two boys know each other's story and yet remain good friends. Günther has invited Paul to his family's house outside Berlin and Paul has accepted, hoping to see Günther's sister Hilde again. Paul has met Hilde once before and she's made quite an impression on him. Hilde is a free spirit who believes that it's OK for a woman to have several lovers at once but she's never looked at Paul that way. She is much more fascinated with Hans a boy from a much lower class who works in the kitchen of a restaurant/dance club that she and Günther frequent. Problem is Günther is also in love with Hans. Add to this somewhat incestuous, somewhat quadrangular love arrangement, the Leopold and Loeb philosophy of the day, throw in a weekend party of heavy drinking and absinthe use, top the whole thing off with a pistol that Günther has become fascinated with and you have a recipe for disaster.The movie opens with Paul being interrogated after two of the party goers end up dead, so you know that this isn't going to be a happy story from the very start but watching these attractive young people as they meander through the events that lead up to this tragedy is fascinating.This movie unfolds slowly and will not be to everyone's taste but there are images and moments that will linger with the patient viewer long after seeing the film. I especially like the way that Günther's homosexuality played a part in the story but didn't dominate it.. It was just one aspect of the overall course of events and was treated as just another fact of these people's lives.

First of all: I really enjoyed this movie. I found it great. Secondly: Yes, there are a few points you might want to critisise. The question is: Do you really care about these points? The pros definitely overweight the contras though.It was one of those movies I felt comfortable with from the first second on. It is slow, it is poetic and you have that constant feeling of melancholy and sadness surrounding you. It is kept in amazingly filmed pictures. The soundtrack simply stunned me. Not to mention the three main characters. It is nothing like any other german movie I have ever seen and I never felt like watching a german movie because it is made on an international, hollywood-like level (meant in a true positive sense!).To give any movie the label `based on a true story' is always a bit cheap. But I generously forget about that and enjoy `a story of two young men, lost in love and life'. Yes - clothes, haircuts and make ups might not (fully) correspond to what it was really like in the 1920ies. Their lifestyle shown and the emancipated way women behave, might have been to advanced for that time. But I just don't know. I could imagine wealthy people to behave like this, in the roaring Twenties, after World War I.If you like slow, poetic movies - you should give it a try. It very much reminded of `lost and delirious', it has got a bit of `dead poets society' and (the calm, peaceful moments in) `the thin red line'.But if you expect another of those `typical' german movies produced in the last few years (which I find great too) and which mostly have similar plots and a similar character, you might feel in the wrong spot.

Oh my, I don't know where to begin. This movie was so unbelievably bad...First, the casting sucked a lot. Daniel Brühl and Jana Pallaske just aren't teens from the 1920s, they look like standard germans from today. The whole "party" looked like they were cast right from Berlin Mitte, with their 70s retro hairdo. Big No No! The most emberassing moment was the one where a "DJ" (??!!) started scratching on an old grammophone. And it gets worse by the minute, the whole plot is boring, badly written and poorly directed. The only highlights are Anna Maria Mühe and August Diehl, but they can't save this boring wreck from sinking. If you really want to see this movie rent it. It's not worth your $$ at the box office.

"Was nuetzt die Liebe in Gedanken" is a very slow and intense film . The camera is awesome and the actors are doing a really good job. Although the film is set in the 1920th its focus is not set on historic details but on the timeless story of young men being in love. It's based on real incidents - Paul and his friend Guenther are in love. Paul with Guenther's sister and Guenther with his sisters boyfriend. Because they feel that their love will not be repeated they decide that once both are happy - they are going to commit suicide. During the whole movie there is that dark feeling creeping through the extremley beautiful pictures. It's a truly wonderful sad and elegant movie about unfulfilled love and the confusion of youth.