No Hard Feelings

No Hard Feelings is a terrible English substitute, not even an attempt at a translation for the original title of a nearly perfect film, Futur Drei. Though the words, to that effect anyway, are part of the dialogue of the film at one relatively minor moment, they are irrelevant to the film as a whole and the way the English title is used by the distributors is simply cheap and a bit of a betrayal of it. But enough of that gripe.The film's interweaving of themes, of immigrants and refugees, of love between gay men, of siblings and families, and more is never, not once, platitudinous, cliché ridden, stereotyped, or easy. Rather it is complex, rich, nuanced, and sensitive. It is open to surprises, to the unknown in feelings of both loss and hope, each seemingly enduring and not always contradictory. It is about "homelessness" in the German sense, "unheimlichkeit," a feeling of being an outsider in the world, an experience of strangeness, estrangement, uncanniness in where we find ourselves to be.The three whose "future" the movie unfolds are a brother and sister, recent immigrants to Germany, and a young man (who will become the lover of the brother) who was born in German to parents who were immigrants from Iran. The future, one declares at the movie's end, is theirs, and yet how that is so remains in some ways both deeply mysterious and a kind of promise which the film offers us, and them, in its images as much as through character and plot, wonderfully presented as they are. To understand it is to see not just to say or to hear. In this way, as in so many others, Futur Drei stays close to the visual truths of film artistry.For it is in the movie's images that much of the weight of its meaning is borne, images of deep suggestiveness–several sustained in montage like sequences, the most stunning near and at the end of the movie. It is part of the film's subtlety and depth for it to be able to sustain so much of its sense and importance in these passages, one, for example, probably the most provocative, evoking the life of immigrants and refugees in Germany, a sequence that is at once very real and surreal, everyday and strange.I will not detail the plot. That is not my purpose here. Suffice it to say that It is finally presented and developed, allowing, as I have already suggested, for surprises, for ways of seeing or feeling that at first seem unexpected and yet, once confronted, appear to have been almost inevitable after all. The ending itself is one of those moments, striking in its audacity and moral exactitude.This is a film that approaches perfection ('approaches' because perfection is too great a burden for any work of art to have to bear). It is beautiful, deeply moving, original, innovative, inventive, imaginative, and stunning to look at, not just at times of heightened feeling, but throughout.Its themes are important, crucial for the lives of all of us, now and in the future. It is, in the best sense of the word, a wonderful work of art, generous and full of amazements, the kind, I mean, one has to find one's way out of to be free.

This is a rewrite of my original review which was censored by amazon. Too many LGBT terms I guess. I just did not think certain issues belonged together in a movie with such serious subject matter.

Satisfied

This was the pits. It had its moments, but the time spent watching it would have been better spent washing windows.

im no film critic but I can truly say this was an intriguing piece. hella layers. would recommend fs.

Different peoples . Different opinions, it's ok movie.

Nope just no

Movie was okay. However it moved rather slow and at times was hard to follow

This sets out to be a good story about asylum seekers in Germany and the relationship between two of the asylum seekers' and a young German Iranian. The telling of the story seemed to loose it's way and the ending was unsatisfactory. Not all bad but could have been a stronger storyline