I have to admit, that the original title is better than the German translation (which I translated back to English). We get a German actor here who is quite convincing in being ... well quite hard to decipher. Then again, we also have a story of others trying to deceive - but to what end and with what purpose? If there is one ... and who can we trust? Things that get layed out here.

And then we have the movie within a movie - which adds another layer to it. Which you'll either appreciate or not while watching this. Just do not expect this to be an erotic highlight or whatever you may read into this ... it is sizzling at times, but it is more teasing than actually pleasing ... that rhymes sort of! Nice. So you got the information, now you can decide if this is for you or not.

It's just totally unbelievable that Mike Figgis, an Oscar nominated and celebrated director made this movie. Everything is wrong. The acting is on an amateur level, the cinematography likewise. A lot of stupid ideas, all done in a most hopeless manner. The music used is of the lowest quality, and never used in a good way. The story is almost non- existent and the characters are shallow and absolutely not believable at all.

It looks like some sort of rejected film school project. An absolute snoozefest, and one of, if not THE worst movie I've ever seen. Shame on the people behind this.

I liked it pretty well.

You have to put yourself in mind that what you are watching is a sort of film noir, with a beat score ... jazz from the 50's. In this movie, director Figgis may be working out some of the themes he runs into in his everyday cinematic life. But what seems most to be going on is an exploration of the possibilities in each of us. The movie is rather existential, which perhaps fits with the beat mantra, the era from which, born in 1948, the director himself sprang.

Realize that you are watching an art film, but one that makes a little more sense than David Lynch's Mulholland Drive or some of Terence Malick's self-conscious work. I found the ending a bit silly, and I began to expect a different denouement, one that would have been darker, perhaps with a twist. But the movie doesn't really leave you hanging to work out your own ending quite as much as so many modern movies do, and which the main character, a screenwriter and part-time screen writing teacher, says is okay because "life doesn't have a pat ending," to paraphrase. The ending even had a little of the Casablanca about it ... boy, I'm really mixing homages here. This movie probably won't go down in the pantheon of greats like Casablanca, but it was a nice effort; sort of an indulgent one, as the attitude the screenwriter takes toward the up-and-coming generation seems to be. But the screenwriter hasn't lost his touch, may even be more attuned than those coming up behind. Plus, Sebastian Koch is pretty nice to look at.