Aquaplaning

A somewhat impressionist at times even slightly surreal miniature about a student Werner Stocker in a splendid performance who out of financial difficulties starts out as pool attendant at an open air swimming pool in Berlins district of Neukölln Escaping from his unpleasant landlord and his lover Patrizia a very young Martina Gedeck he soon starts to live at the baths and as swimmers disappear and the baths are closed for the winter he turns the grounds into his own perfect refuge from civilisation and social pressure becoming increasingly detached from reality What may sound like an annoyingly gimmicky premise is executed here playfully yet with admirable simplicity and a subtle unpretentious poetic sensibility that one would wish for more often in contemporary German cinema