Themes: Brief Encounters, Innocence Lost, Sexual Awakening
Main Cast: Nicole Glaeser, Tina Sanoke, Christopher Schoeps, Sebastian Rinka, Monique Glaeser
Release Year: 2001
Country: AT
Run Time: 62 minutes
Plot
In this coming-of-age drama from Germany, Nicole (Nicole Glaeser) is a 14-year-old girl who feels stuck in the awkward middle ground between childhood and adulthood; while she's still learning the complicated emotional terrain of mature relationships, her instincts tell her she's ready for a boyfriend and all that that entails. Nicole has her eye on one of her schoolmates, Schoeppi (Christopher Schoeps), and begins pursuing him with no small degree of enthusiasm. Nicole decides to move things to the next level when she invites Schoeppi over to her house on an evening when her mother isn't home, determined to show him just how strong her feelings for him run. Mein Stern was the first dramatic feature from documentary filmmaker Valeska Grisebach and drew an enthusiastic response after screenings at the 2001 Locarno Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Review
Be My Star may be a fiction film, but it has a documentary feel. The unhurried pacing and naturalistic performances emphasize the embarrassing pauses, awkward silences, self-conscious body language, and occasional inability to articulate or even show emotions that characterize teens' real-life interactions. Indeed, the largely nonprofessional cast looks more like a bunch of ordinary people than what you'd find in a typical Hollywood movie, and the film's two main actors, Nicole Glaeser and Christopher Schoeps, even play characters with the same first names as their own. Writer/director Valeska Grisebach doesn't always stick with a purely realistic filmmaking style -- for example, the movie features a long take in a teen club where all but one of the dancers suddenly disappear -- but most of the time this film could be considered an exercise in realism. This approach has both its good and bad points. On the good side, the film seems to be an honest exploration of teen life that isn't as exploitative as Kids, for example, because Grisebach is less interested in showing shocking behavior than in examining how teens mimic adults (who are also mostly absent from the film), while lacking a clear sense of what they really want and how they can get it. Also, this documentary-like film does have a discernable (albeit loosely structured) plot, so it does offer an actual story in addition to revealing individual scenes. However, the story isn't particularly gripping and the film's muted tone doesn't lend itself to a lot of excitement. If you find it difficult to get emotionally involved in the lives of characters who often seem both inarticulate and affectless, then you may have a hard time getting much entertainment value from this movie. ~ Todd Kristel, All Movie Guide
Cast
Nicole Glaeser
Tina Sanoke
Christopher Schoeps
Sebastian Rinka
Monique Glaeser
Jeanine Glaeser
Credit
Valeska Grisebach - Director, Anna von Wagner - Producer, Valeska Grisebach - Screenwriter
