Why are films made about people with no redeeming characteristics which then expect us to care about what happens to them? It's 1929 and young adult friends Paul and Guenter decide to spend the weekend at Guenter's summer house outside Berlin while his parents are away. They are privately educated and faux intellectuals. Friday: They arrive at the summer house. Paul meets Guenter's manipulative sister Hilde and immediately falls in love. Hilde has sex with Hans a working class guy. Hans has sex with Guenter who is in love with Hans. Saturday: Guenter and Hilde have a big party that goes on all night where all sorts of daft stuff happens. Sunday: The four main players go back to Guenters' Berlin apartment. Hans and Guenter spend time together, then Hans spends the night with Hilde. Guenter and Paul decide to form a suicide club where they kill those who destroyed their joy and then shoot themselves. In the cold light of Monday morning Paul changes his mind. Guenter shoots Hans then himself. I don't know how that description made the plot sound, but its presentation is as pretentious soul gazing. Paul and Guenter constantly emote a load of rubbish whilst being miserable (think Neil in the Young Ones). The only person who seemed capable of enjoying himself was the working class, therefore immoral in ignorance, Hans. Their most profound insight, that true joy can only be experienced once and then the rest of your life is spent being punished for it, is profoundly ignorant, spurious pseudo religious based mumbo jumbo. You know the film's a lost cause when the 'DJ' at the party, set in 1929, starts 'scratching' with an old 78 gramophone record.

"Was nützt die Liebe in Gedanken" is a fine made coming of age flick about a group young guys, who are playing with the Ideas of true love, the meaning of life and the question, if murder could be an expression of love. It tells a true story. And even if it set in the early 1930's, the questions and feelings witch are explored are timeless and that's why the movie is reaching us in our time and life. Daniel Brühl (good bye Lenin) and August Diehl (23) - both winner of the German actor-movie-award - playing their Part of the young feeling shaken men so touching and faithful, that you get to know, why they won their award. Brilliant Pictures, a great score, a touching story - a wonderful movie. This kind is a rare thing.

Paul (played by Daniel Brühl) and Günther (played by August Diehl) are school chums and best friends in 1927 Weimar Germany. Günther is gay and Paul is straight but has never slept with a woman. The two boys know each other's story and yet remain good friends.

Günther has invited Paul to his family's house outside Berlin and Paul has accepted, hoping to see Günther's sister Hilde again. Paul has met Hilde once before and she's made quite an impression on him. Hilde is a free spirit who believes that it's OK for a woman to have several lovers at once but she's never looked at Paul that way. She is much more fascinated with Hans a boy from a much lower class who works in the kitchen of a restaurant/dance club that she and Günther frequent. Problem is Günther is also in love with Hans.

Add to this somewhat incestuous, somewhat quadrangular love arrangement, the Leopold and Loeb philosophy of the day, throw in a weekend party of heavy drinking and absinthe use, top the whole thing off with a pistol that Günther has become fascinated with and you have a recipe for disaster.

The movie opens with Paul being interrogated after two of the party goers end up dead, so you know that this isn't going to be a happy story from the very start but watching these attractive young people as they meander through the events that lead up to this tragedy is fascinating.

This movie unfolds slowly and will not be to everyone's taste but there are images and moments that will linger with the patient viewer long after seeing the film. I especially like the way that Günther's homosexuality played a part in the story but didn't dominate it.. It was just one aspect of the overall course of events and was treated as just another fact of these people's lives.