Four friends from Spain travel to Berlin to surprise a friend on his birthday. Things don't go well and tensions are revealed. This tedious movie has nothing new to say about anything and does so with a minimum of humor or interest. The movie is done by hand-held camera. The camera jerks constantly, even when focused on a character who isn't moving. I suppose this is meant to convey tension but for me it simply increased my boredom and annoyance and I found myself looking away it times. I don't speak Spanish, so looking away meant missing the captions, yet I didn't get the sense that I missed anything because each scene dragged on and on to make its point. One further annoyance: when the Spanish-speaking characters encountered German speakers, the captions stop. This is a pretty common practice. Problem is, some of the actors' accents are so thick that their English is unintelligible. This wasn't too great a loss because no one was saying anything very interesting anyway.
Plot summary
Four old friends from the university times travel from Barcelona to Berlin to meet Álex Comas, the other friend of the bunch who moved Germany years ago. They are Olivia, a woman pregnant of seven months of her first baby; Guille and Anna, a longtime couple with problems after she was fired and doesn't find a new job; and the naive Eloi, who despite to have work moved to his parents' house after to lose his own by the debts. Arriving the Friday to spend three days remembering old times in order to celebrate with Comas during a full weekend his 35th birthday that it will be the Sunday, the own Comas is surprised by the unexpected visit of the group, but soon the things complicate between them: in their first talks emerge contradictions and conflicts by their different lives and personal situations, and at the end of the night a taciturn and depressive Comas, taking advantage a boys date to drink in a night pub with Guille and Eloi, leaves the pub and misses in the city unable to stay with his friends, leaving the four alone. To the next day, realizing about Comas' missing, Olivia accepts to stay in the house to wait him, while Guille, Eloi and Anna take a walk by Berlin. Cooking a cake, Olivia receives the visit of Marion, who reveals to be Comas' girlfriend since two years ago although the relation ended recently, explaining so Comas' behavior, and the conceited and bad attitude of a full of himself Guille with Eloi makes that he leaves them, causing Anna's rejection to Guille. At the same time that Olivia faces Marion claiming Comas as the father of her baby after an one-night affair when he was in Barcelona months ago, Guille locates by chance to Comas and follows him hoping to talk with him, and Anna decides returns Barcelona to split of Guille, while he tries that she revokes her decision. According time moves to Sunday, the five will discover that the distances can change everything, even the own friendship between them.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
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