REVIEWS Looking For Simon REVIEWED BY MARK ADAMS


A domestic detective story with ruminations on family, memory and sexuality, Jan Krüger’s feature Looking For Simon (Auf Der Suche) intrigues and impresses in occasional moments, despite settling for a rather plodding style and lack of real drama. Unlikely to set buyers’ pulses racing, it is oddly watchable nonetheless. Screening in the Forum, the film makes stabs at


psychological-thriller territory as a mis-matched couple search a city for a missing person. But the levels of both thrills and psychology are so modest that it succeeds more due to its insights and good use of locations rather than as a traditional thriller. Middle-aged mother Valerie (Harfouch) has


not been able to get in touch with her son Simon, who is a doctor in Marseille, for some weeks, and asks his ex-lover, Jens, to fly over from Berlin to help look for him. As the pair talk to police, visit the clinic where


he worked and view videos they find in Simon’s apartment, it becomes clear they don’t really know Simon. While Valerie is still trying to accept the reality of her son’s gay lifestyle, Jens is bemused — and confused — to find Simon had also been having a relationship with Camille (Leroy), who worked at the clinic.


FORUM


Ger-Fr. 2011. 89mins Director/screenplay Jan Krüger Production companies Schramm Film Koerner & Weber, Neon Productions, WDR Sales Neon Productions, www.neoncinema.com Producers Florian Koerner von Gustorf, Michael Weber Cinematography Bernadette Paassen Music Birger Clausen Main cast Corinna Harfouch, Nico Rogner, Valerie Leroy, Mehdi Dehbi, Mireille Perrier


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False leads take them to a Marseille lido, where


a neighbour says he saw Simon swimming; to the car dealer who sold him a yellow sports car; and to a vineyard where Simon and Camille went on a holiday. Each offers fresh nuggets of hope — as well as tiny insights into Valerie and Jens — but ultimately leads them nowhere. Writer-director Krüger seems more interested


in Jens — who pursues sexual encounters while in the city — and his reaction to Simon’s disappear- ance than he does Valerie, despite the fact she is a more interesting character. But essentially both are sketchy figures, simply caught up in the search for Simon in the atmospheric French port city and revealing little about themselves.


PANORAMA DOCUMENTARY


We Were Here REVIEWED BY JONATHAN ROMNEY


Thirty years after Aids first made its horrific impact, documentarist David Weissman has made a powerful and intimate testament to the epidem- ic’s effect on San Francisco’s gay community. We Were Here concentrates on the experiences of five people, making for a cohesive focus which allows for a serious and affecting account of a community in crisis. Bolstered by archive footage and stills, the film is functional in formal terms, largely com- prising interviews with its five subjects. But this approach pays off, both in the density


of information conveyed and in the moving, but never sentimentalised, testimony to lost friends and lovers. TV sales especially should be healthy, and the film looks set to be a festival staple. Weissman and co-director Bill Weber film their five participants, each identified on screen by first


n 22 Screen International in Berlin February 14, 2011


US 2010. 90mins Director David Weissman International sales The Film Collaborative, www. thefilmcollaborative.org Producer David Weissman Co-director/editor Bill Weber Cinematography Marsha Kahm Music Holcombe Waller Main cast Ed Wolf, Paul Boneberg, Daniel Goldstein, Guy Clark, Eileen Glutzer


name only, narrating their lives before, during and since the Aids crisis. Guy Clark is a florist and resi- dent since the 1970s of San Francisco’s gay neigh- bourhood, the Castro. Paul Boneberg talks about his career as an activist and community leader. Eileen Glutzer, a long-time feminist, found herself one of the first local medical workers committed to treating Aids patients as a community insider, while artist Daniel Goldstein played a key part in art initiatives such as the Names Project. Adding a droll note to his personal reminis-


cences, Ed Wolf recalls being a shy outsider in the hedonistic Castro of the 1970s, only to find his more restrained emotional style qualified him eminently to be a care worker. Two of the most affecting testimonies come from Daniel, who remembers losing two partners, and from Ed, whose reserve and self-mocking humour give an extra charge to his sadder musings. The film’s chronological approach covers the


pre-Aids idyll, the first worrying signs of a new ill- ness, its sudden explosive advance — and then,


crucially, the ways in which the San Francisco gay community mobilised itself, first to provide care, then to take political action. The upside of the Aids challenge, as all attest,


was that the gay community found a new purpose, unity and compassion, with special emphasis given to the solidarity shown by the city’s lesbians, previously estranged from their male counterparts. There is brief mention of the rise in American


homophobia, but it is treated almost cursorily, as a problem overcome, one unconvincing shortcom- ing of the film’s predominantly positive slant. But it also points out that Aids is far from a closed case. There are, however, drawbacks to We Were


Here’s deliberately restricted focus. While Weiss- man and Weber have chosen specifically to discuss the San Francisco gay community, little is said about the worldwide spread of Aids, and it would be easy to emerge from the film blissfully unaware of, say, the disease’s effects in Africa. Even so, that should not diminish what this substantial film achieves with regard to its specific area of study.


The backdrop of Marseilles adds much to the


feel and tone of Looking For Simon. In fact, Simon had planned to escape on holiday to Morocco and take with him Jalil (Dehbi), from whom he bought the sports car, and that sense of a vibrant city with close links to North Africa is always a clear part of the story. The search ends abruptly — as does the film —


with little sense that much has been achieved, apart from some mild insights in the characters and attitudes of Valerie and Jens. There are vague, unexplored, hints the film could have developed into a ‘thriller’ of modest proportions, but Krüger seems happier to let it drift in a rather ill-defined way rather than come to firm resolutions.


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