PÖFF 28: “Tomorrow somewhere by the sea”

Spoiler alert!

On November 18th, I went to a screening of “Tomorrow Somewhere by the Sea” (“Morgen irgendwo am Meer”) at PÖFF (Black Nights Film Festival), which included a Q&A by the creators of the movie afterwards. Unfortunately, I could not stay for the Q&A myself since I had taken my students to see the film and needed to get them back to school as soon as possible. Therefore, my review will be my take on the movie without considering the background offered by the filmmakers.

Based on the novel by the same name, the film revolves around a group of high schoolers. The main character, Konrad (Jonas Kaufmann), convinces his childhood best friend Romy (Carlotta Weide) and her boyfriend Julian (Louie Betton) to join him on a post-graduation summer road trip from Germany to Portugal. Along the way, they pick up a hitchhiker called Nele (Sophia Münster). The four go on a journey of self-discovery. There is unresolved business between Konrad and Romy, leading to tension and jealousy between Romy and her boyfriend, Julian. Meanwhile, there are hints of romantic feelings between Konrad and Nele. She helps Konrad relive happy memories, which show a deep connection between him, Romy, and a mysterious male friend whom we only see in memory or flashback sequences.

It turns out that this mystery man (Konrad’s best friend and Romy’s ex-boyfriend) passed away from cancer the year before. The tension between Romy and Konrad stemmed from her being upset at him for not having shown up for his dying best friend at the hospital and her still not being over his death. The friend had secretly planned the trip, and now Konrad offers it as an olive branch to Romy, making the trip happen the way his friend would have wanted. The movie ends on a bittersweet but hopeful note — the group (minus Julian) makes it to their final destination, Lisbon, and there are hints of reconciliation and the beginning of young love between Konrad and Nele. However, a sense of uncertainty and inconclusiveness is left lingering in the air.

This movie is, on many sites, described as a coming-of-age roadtrip drama with four fundamentally different young people. I would describe it as “a frustrated young couple, the third wheel friend, and a random hitchhiker go on a trip planned out by a dead friend. Everyone is sad.”

Despite its valiant efforts at emotionality, this movie could best be summed up with the word “bland.” There are several known tropes in this film that we’ve seen in these kinds of films before — a manic pixie dream girl (Nele) paired with a closed-off troubled young man (Konrad), a love interest threatens to leave, but after some predictable convincing, stays. There were many over-used visual elements as well — the blocky neon-colored title cards between each new city felt very generic; in fact, I had just seen this exact same style in another PÖFF screening days before. The same could be said about the minimalistic background piano music playing during the emotional scenes. I couldn’t help but wish the director and cinematographer had thought of more original ways to depict these moments.

This movie did several things well. First, I don’t think I have ever seen a better visual depiction of how violent sudden emotional flashbacks can be. The visuals and music made them truly visceral, exactly as they feel in real life. I also appreciated that the movie wasn’t needlessly dragged out. The actors were also well cast and, for the most part, believable.

There were several moments in this movie that left me scratching my head, though. 

There were at least two different moments where Konrad showed Romy something special connected to her interests and her ex-boyfriend (his best friend) — for example, in Lyon, he showed her a statue of the Little Prince, her favorite book. She was touched by this gesture the first time, but when they got to Van Gogh’s café, she completely flipped out, started screaming at Konrad for toying around with her emotions and proceeded to run amok in a foreign town. Here, we saw her violent flashbacks to her dying boyfriend, but why didn’t she get these flashbacks at previous landmarks? I could understand her having some kind of a negative reaction, but that extreme of a reaction felt jarring.

Another thing I noticed is how handsy everybody in the friend group was with each other. Romy and Konrad freely held hands at several points in the movie, even with her boyfriend standing right there. Nele would hold Konrad around the waist in a way only a significant other would, even though they barely had any chemistry at the time.

At one point, the boyfriend, Julian, hears bad news from home and decides to leave and fly back to Germany. However, they were using his car, and he was the designated driver. His solution? Hand the car keys over to Konrad, the man who had jumped off a bridge only a few scenes earlier. But Julian simply trusts him and is okay with putting his girlfriend’s life in this guy’s hands, asking him just to leave his car in front of his porch afterwards, likely several weeks later. Is this normal in Germany? 

This movie clearly set out to be a heartfelt road trip movie for teenagers, and it is. The director, Patrick Büchting, knew what story his debut movie was trying to tell and succeeded in telling it. I, a cynical movie fanatic enthralled by arthouse cinema, am not the target audience. My teenage students, on the other hand, loved this movie. The only thing they found disappointing was the abrupt, inconclusive ending.

This movie would be perfect to play in the background on a quiet Saturday morning while cooking an omelette. Or you can take teenagers to see this one; they will probably love it.

Author: Elisabeth