Viva Europe! (2009)

Directed by: Edwin Brienen | 80 minutes | drama | Actors: Godehard Giese, Agnieszka Rozenbajgier, Hendrik Arns

Berlin, a city with an eventful history and yet time seems to stand still there, at least in films of the caliber ‘Viva Europa!’ where Berlin once again figures as a backdrop for classic ingredients such as communism, singing transvestites, blue angels, the eighties, know-it-alls oration directly at the viewer and of course fascists and Nazis. Director Edwin Brienen took a good look at Fassbinder’s films and then let himself be inspired by his least memorable aspects. Few convincing actors dress up as pimp, hooker, ambiguous bartender or man with a mustache and each get a few one-liners or flirt with a ‘wrong’ song in a sketch or video clip-like scene. But badly played back nostalgic schlager songs and Lionel Ritchie are, of course, again übercool in the context of hard-felt existentialist metropolitan fear, loneliness and helplessness.

Do you already feel it? Filmhuis Cavia in Amsterdam: liters of coffee, the stale projector room, the sweaty cinema, tobacco smoking men and women in orange dungarees and during the break a tearjerker sounds through the stairwell. They again look for a strange angle and mess around with mirrors, but it doesn’t really help. What is amusing are the numerous split-screens that have no function at all except to show even less of the subject. Then again, that’s pretty cleverly contrarian. But ‘Viva Europe!’ is mainly pretentious amateurism: fringe figures who philosophize politically and economically all day long. Because what could be more interesting than hearing yourself talk about the future of Europe, in Berlin, in a low-budget film, by Edwin Brienen.