Horst in Translation ([email protected])
"True Love Ways" is a German German-language movie from last year (2015). Do not be fooled by the English title, there is no English-language in here. The writer and director is Swiss filmmaker Mathieu Seiler and this film from him we have here is his most known work so far without a doubt. The film is entirely in black-and-white during its 105 minutes runtime and I am not too sure why they went with that creative decision. It may have been to make it a bit more artistically looking and to keep it from being too violent and there is some blood in here, but you never see the red color. Or maybe it is a homage to film noir. Who knows. Anyway, this is the story of a young couple. The woman apparently wants to leave her boyfriend after a strange dream and the boyfriend randomly meets a stranger at a bar who suggests him that he could abduct the girl. Then the boyfriend comes to the rescue and he is her hero again. The boyfriend accepts the offer. But this is not even half of the movie. Not even close, maybe 30 minutes max. And this is also when the film gets worse. As they are moving on with their plan, we find out that the "kind helper" has actually very different plans. He and his gang keep abducting young women, abuse them, film them and eventually kill them and this is where the horror/thriller element really comes into play. Unlucky coincidence for the female protagonist I guess as for roughly half of the film she gets chased around by these gentlemen. Strangely enough, she manages to injure them and even kill them one by one like some German Bride from Kill Bill. The film had nothing to do with realism at that point anymore. And just when you accept to enjoy it as an unrealistic and pointless horror guilty pleasure, the last 10 minutes (after she got away) are when the film hits rock-bottom. They really tried to make it impactful, artistic and creative, almost beautifully-looking at that point, and it wasn't working at all. Like the entire plot twist towards the end or that she, in fact, got away. This is quite a shame I must say. With the first somewhat interesting 30 minutes, there was potential for much more in here. But the longer the film went and the more the story took a turn for the absurd, the less I found myself enjoying it. Maybe it could have been nice at a short film about the initial plot idea with a runtime of 40 minutes or under. But as a full feature film that is closer to 2 hours than to 1.5 hours, it is certainly not worth seeing. I give it a thumbs-down. Not recommended. Maybe I'd also have enjoyed it more if I found the lead actress more attractive physically. as she is really in almost every scene from start to finish, except the bar scene early on.