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MY BROTHER LAID Rating:   Director: Sven Taddicken Producers: Christian Hunemorder, Michael Jungfleisch Writer: Matthias Pacht Director of Photography: Daniela Knapp Cast: Roman Knizka, Hinnerk Schoenmann, Marie-Luise Schramm, Julia Jentsch Visit the IMDB page for full cast and crew |
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Review by: Ryan
Kugler
11/18/02
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Mein Bruder, der Vampir doesn't exactly translate into Getting My Brother Laid. In fact, when this German title comes up on the screen, the English subtitle reads My Brother the Vampire. So, what's the deal with the AFI festival program listing this quirky, but ultimately unsatisfying black comedy as something different than what the subtitle reads? My guess is that the distributors eventually want their film to reach a large American audience and by calling it Getting My Brother Laid, they have a better shot at it. Whatever the true intentions, the title change worked and got me into the theater. Of course, with a title like that I expected a typical teen sex comedy, but instead got something far different (though in this case, that's not necessarily a good thing).
Getting My Brother Laid turns out to be an apt title as it pretty much sums up what the film is all about. Roman Knizka (in a convincing performance) stars as Josch (Josh in the subtitles), a mentally challenged (I believe that's the correct term) man who seems doomed to enter his thirties a virgin. His younger sister Nic (Marie-Luise Schramm), also a virgin and also looking to score herself, gives him wisdom and even helps him spy on brother Mike (Hinnerk Schonemann) when he makes love to his girlfriend Nadine (Julia Jensch). Mike wants to help his brother as well and tries such desperate measures as hooking him up with a co-worker, demonstrating the joys of self-pleasure and eventually bringing him to a brothel-on-wheels (a whoretrailer, if you will). None of these ideas work because Josch pines after Nadine and refuses to indulge in anything that doesn't involve her. Throw in a musical number (easily the strangest since Frank took his gang to watch Ben lip-synch to Roy Orbison) and a finale involving incest and you've got one of the wildest, most head-scratching cinematic trips in a long while.
I have mixed emotions about writer/director Sven Taddicken's bold debut feature. On the one hand, I enjoyed the performances, appreciated some of the offbeat (and beat-off) humor and I applaud Taddicken for exploring such controversial material, but this thing is just a bit too out there and over-the-top with a resolution that seems tacked-on. Taddicken takes us places where we're not really prepared to go, and the stuff at the end seems to be there only to garner a shocked reaction out of the audience (which worked at the screening that I attended).
Getting My Brother Laid is something that I'm going to remember for awhile, though whether that's a good or a bad thing is up for debate. It's always nice to see a film that isn't afraid to challenge and provoke (and only a foreign film would be able to go as far as this one does), but the shocks aren't earned, they're forced. The most shocking thing though (and what I most look forward to hearing about), will be when American audiences (if this ever gets released on these shores) walk in to what they think is the next American Pie and walk out with looks of sheer terror.
(Screened at the 2002 AFI Film Festival.)
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