"Die Mitte der Welt" is a German-Austrian co-production from 2016, this year, and the language is predominantly German, with very few English phrases here and there because of one of the character's American origin. The writer and director is relatively young Austrian movie maker Erwa and it resulted in a movie that runs for almost two hours. And these were painful to sit through. Regardless of how much all the characters in this film may have suffered, you as an audience member with taste in movies suffer more while watching this and with this, of course, I don't mean that you feel for any of the characters, but I do mean you suffer because of how crappy this film is. Lets start with the gay-themed content in here. There are many many gay-themed short films and also some gay-themed full feature films out there and the problem there is often that they entirely rely on audiences caring for these films because of the story on sexuality. This is partially true for this one here. There are more than a few scenes where this film includes pointless sex scenes or nudity that adds nothing to the story, but was just included because the two characters in love were men. You would not see the same in the same quantity in a film about a heterosexual relationship. And besides I really object to the first quote of the film when the main character talks about being pretty much a normal regular guy, only that he is a bit more gay than the others. So, is he implying that his sexuality is not normal? That is actually truly offensive. And there were more quotes like these that I had a problem with.

Coompletely aside, from the sexual note here, this is an extremely pretentious film where ambition and actual talent are miles away from each other. The scenes about the characters' younger years/childhoods were still better than the scenes in the present, but these old scenes were completely destroyed by extremely pompously pretentious voice-overs in the most poetic language that did not work at all with what we saw. These voice-overs came from lead actor Hofmann and while he looked physically fine, I believe that he was a bad casting decision as it was painful to watch him try so hard, but yet he just did not have the talent to really make the character work. And this is extremely disappointing as Hofmann is in basically every non-flashback scene from start to finish of a long movie. In reference to his love interest, I must say that this actor was also miscast. The final plot development slightly justified his casting, but not that much. About the girls, the sister and best friend, I feel that they did not have as much to work with as one may think looking at their stories, but they weren't convincing either.

The only somewhat decent performances come from Timoteo who makes a character work sometimes at least and as her character is written in a horribly cringeworthy manner, this is a success. Actually her last scene on the bed with her son was possibly the best acting moment from anybody in the entire film. Gersak is also decent, even if he also does not have as much screen-time or as good material as I hoped he would. But these two cannot save this film from being a disaster. The story and, to a lesser extent, performances of the young actors are just so underwhelming that this film cannot be saved. I could list 20 quotes for example, but luckily I have forgotten most of these already, which is pretty amazing. Lucky me. But I remember cringing at least a dozen times while watching this film. The music/soundtrack is not particularly good either. Lets just give one example of where the film screwed up completely. When they take a break from the gay-themed story towards the end, they just randomly rush in a sub-plot which includes basically the sister admitting that she secretly gave a poison to her mother, so that she would lose her unborn child and not only this happened, but she almost died from it. But hey, the main character is, as he says, from a family/background that is fairly normal. How about mentioning that your sister is a complete sociopath. And then the filmmakers/writers try to justify it by including completely random a story about a coma patient that the sister visits every day. These moments were maybe when the movie hit rock-bottom.

Aside from that, looking at the general plot idea. We have a gay protagonist. Another boy comes to his class. They fall in love and have sex under the shower. Then they have sex again. And again. And again. And then the other guy has sex with the boy' best friend. The best friend that is so so close with our hero and they would never do that to each other. The best friend that our hero does not even tell her that he is an item with the new guy. There is so so much in this film that doesn't make sense and honestly looking at how garbage the script is, the performances are still somewhat okay I guess. As a whole I must say the one thing that got wrong probably the most is how Erwa wanted us so much to like the characters, but I really disliked almost all of them, actually except the ones we were supposed to dislike, namely the best friend and the lover because they just wanted everything to stay that way as they were happy like that. But hey, you need to show us Hofmann's character being so strong when he interacts (or not interacts) with his former best friend and boyfriend. Enough said. This film is a contender for worst film I have seen all year and I have seen really many. I recommend you to stay far far away.

A movie adaptation of the popular German YA novel THE CENTER OF THE WORLD by Andreas Steinhöfel, published in 1998, CENTER OF MY WORLD, directed by Austrian filmmaker Jakob M. Erwa, his third feature, is a Bildungsroman about a 17-year-older Phil (Hofmann),who returns from his three-week summer camp, during which his hometown has been torpedoed by a storm, and is bemused to notice that his twin sister Dianne (Stappenbeck) and their single mother Glass (Timoteo) are barely on speaking terms. What happened between the mother-daughter pair? It must go back to their past, and the movie takes a fitful rhythm to juggle between the two time-lines of present and past.

Meantime, Phil has his own adolescent problem to cope with, his nascent attraction to the new boy in the class Nicholas (Schümann) would put a strain on the friendship with his best friend Kat (Jung),especially when Nicholas and him become an item. Little does he know (but for viewers, telling signs are everywhere),a double betrayal is laid in store. For a sensitive, romantic soul like Phil, who is perpetually looking for a sense of security in his one-sided infatuation, the school of hard knocks is a requisite rite of passage, and gladly, he will grow out of it and at the same time, solving the multifarious little hitches to a wholesome happy ending, topped off with a hard-earned decision to let go of the big question mark of his existence, who is his biological father?

While Erwa's narrative structure tends to be haphazard, more often than not, the dialogue is pure platitude (albeit benign to a fault),his visual flare also tallies with a televisual blandness, with a habit of dropping pop anthems in full impact, but the most peevish thing is that many potentially intriguing ingredients are unwisely downplayed, for example, Dianne's preternatural power of communing with animals, inherited from their unnamed father, is only exhibited once, and by focusing on Phil, the missing piece of Dianne's more dramatic and numinous arc feels short-changed.

Two outstanding performances emerge out of a patchy cast (to this reviewer's eyes, Schümann's jock allure is roundly undermined by his asymmetrical eyes, and both Stappenbeck and Jung feel miscast, the former doesn't continue a uniquely ethereal air of her younger counterpart, played by Sarah Fuhrer, and the latter is saddled with a very unsympathetic role who doesn't even have a chance to explain her improprieties),a fresh-faced Louis Hofmann beautifully interprets Phil's sensitivity and queer delicacy, and a lissom Sabine Tomoteo is indeed, a wonder-maker through inhabiting a fey, temperamental woman who lives with her two kids in a derelict mansion, and never for a split second, actually, goes off the deep end against all the seemingly impressions, albeit her troubled history riddled with frequent break-ups, bad reputation and a mysterious miscarriage that is created by and furthermore creates internal fiction, she makes Glass a hell of a woman and a darn good mother too, that is something only a real trouper manages to pull off.

What does cinema mean to you? To me it means emotions and stories, told with moving images, with music and with words. And, in my opinion, for cinema to be at its greatest it needs to brave and vulnerable.

Center of My World is exactly that: brave and vulnerable. And intimate. And true.

Its is the story of Phil, a standard teenager, who is just a little gayer than the rest. But him being gay is really not an important part of the story.

He struggles with his family, with deeply hidden secrets of the past and their effects in the present, which may break his family apart. And he falls in love for the first time. That's really it.

And while watching this in the cinema some people laughed at the film. Because it shows how love is, unironically and over-the-top. It dives deep into Phil's emotions and shows us not only the center of his world, but maybe even the center of THE world (hence the original German title "The Center of the World"). And most people can not let themselves dive into these depths.

And if you want to experience this small gem of a movie, you have to make yourself vulnerable, too. Leave your irony at home, just watch this movie as you are - naked and vulnerable.

Then you may see what cinema can do, what cinema is for.