Love in Thoughts

REVIEW
1927, Berlin. Guenther (August Diehl), a well-off prep school student, and his working class poet friend, Paul (Daniel Bruehl), decide to spend a weekend at Guenther’s summer house with the former’s sister, Hilde (Anna Maria Mühe). Paul’s immediately smitten with Hilde, and it seems the attraction is mutual. But Hilde is something of a frisky polyamorist. To wit: she’s secretly dating Hans — Guenther’s former lover, a fact that wouldn’t sit well with her gay, emotionally fragile sibling. When Hans and a group of friends show up at the house, this vacation swells into an explosion of sex, drugs, booze, confused emotions, and bloody consequences. Directed with what Variety dubbed “a heavy dose of swoony, doomed romanticism,” Achim von Borrie’s heady feature was inspired by a real-life Weimar-era scandal, “the Steglitz Student Tragedy” and Arno Meyer Zu Kueingdorf’s novel about the incident, “The Suicide Club.” With queer films like this, as well as Love! Valor! Compassion! and Boyfriends, you may never want to go on a summer home vacation again! (German with English subtitles)