Directed/Written by: Jan Schomburg Produced by: Corinna C. Poetter
This critique contains spoilers – if you have not seen the film yet, go to the Best Shorts page.
The Park City 2005 Festival season was an exercise in mediocrity. Whether it was the grandmaster Sun Dance or the supposedly edgy Slamdance, “average” was the watchword. A majority of the films were well made, but had no reason to be made. So it was with the kind of elation I have been reserving for finding a stripper at a Baptist chorus concert that I watched Never eveN, an unusual work from Germany.
The world of Never eveN runs in reverse. People grow young, items spring from garbage cans into their hands, and they ride their bicycles backwards down the road. Relationships start as the calm love of two old souls and then get wilder until at their sexual peak, the two people never see each other again. The story follows Max, a normal man who wakes up one day to find himself living his life forward. His immediate problem: he’s thirsty. He can’t use a faucet because water shoots from the drain up; where would he put the glass? He can’t buy a drink as bottles are taken empty and then filled with each sip. It isn’t that I couldn’t come up with an answer for Max’s problem, or for any of the myriad problems he might run into, but that I had never thought of those dilemmas before. That made this new, and for a film critic, exciting. The plot is simple although the events are complex.
Jan Schomburg shoots this fantasy with a little more color, a little more contrast, than reality, which sets it aside enough to make it believable as its own world. Jakob Hüfner makes a completely sympathetic Max. The only other character of note is Max’s girlfriend, played by Sandra Borgmann. She is there to be charming and desirable and in that she succeeds, even with her limited screen time. What is surprising is how romantic this piece is.
While the find of Slamdance, I can’t say that the screening room helped the experience. With a low placed screen and a flat floor, it was difficult to see the subtitles around the heads of those in front of me. But Never eveN works even if the occasional phrase is left un-translated. Schomburg has said, “I wanted to make a film that feels good and that entertains and makes people laugh in an intelligent way.” He succeeded.