A refined and appealing feature that looks as authentic as a documentary. Grisebach tells a love story about a boy and a girl in a working class district of former East Berlin. The filmmaker found the actors after a lengthy process of interviewing and casting among the kids in the relevant area. Those interviews provided the background for the story. The kids’ ideas about love, loyalty, sexuality, work and future were assimilated into the dialogue.Nicole is fourteen and lives in a block of flats. She hangs around in the street during the day with her girlfriends and works as apprentice in a bakery without the work interesting her. She is really waiting for a moment when something special will happen. That moment arrives when she meets Christopher. But she is not prepared for the fact that a first love can also be so insecure and tormenting. The mother of Nicole has to work in the evenings. Then Nicole and Christopher can play the game an adult couple would play. They try to get a grip on the picture of love that they have observe among adults, but it isn’t all a bed of roses. It is even more difficult to face that picture with an image of your own.The film’s great power is in the calm and sharp observations of the natural and nonprofessional actors in their authentic surroundings. As a result, small gestures, objects or words acquire a miraculous effect.
