So is it a good or a bad sign if the title alone makes you stumble?

"Leander Haussmann's Stasi comedy" - are there so many other Stasi comedies that there is a risk of confusion?

Isn't "Stasi comedy" in the combination with the author and director a less useful generic term, because possibly no other copies of this genre exist?

It wasn't called "Leander Haussmann's NVA" in 2005, and it wasn't his "Sonnenallee" (1999).

The final film in the GDR trilogy is also not autobiographical, because Haussmann, born in 1959, did his military service in the NVA, but unlike some others, he did not work for the state security.

Peter Korte

Editor in the feuilleton of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper in Berlin.

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Maybe the title was a stopgap solution, that can happen from time to time.

Happens even more often when you watch other movie titles that just pretend someone had an idea.

It's going really well.

There's a young man standing at a red pedestrian traffic light in a residential area.

No car, no pedestrians far and wide.

He stops and reads Jack Kerouac's Unterwegs to pass the time.

The traffic light is still red.

He stops.

A case of pathological obedience - that pleases the monitors in the Stasi headquarters, who are watching exactly this traffic light.

A fine example of service to the workers' and farmers' state.

A nostalgic evening

Unfortunately, it's not quite as fun.

Prenzlauer Berg of the present follows the world of prefabricated buildings.

The successful writer Ludger Fuchs (Jörg Schüttauf) has fetched his Stasi files, his wife and adult children are already looking forward to a nostalgic evening because Fuchs is an icon of resistance against the regime.

The beautiful evening is over quickly because the file contains a very clear letter from a woman from a time when Fuchs was already with his wife.

Annoyed, he leaves the apartment.

Standing at a traffic light, he reverts to being the young man (David Kross) at the perpetually red light.

It is characteristic of Leander Haußmann's point of view that the view shifts from the political to the amorous in the first five minutes.

The whole thing is more of a Stasi romance than a comedy.

An innocent young man stands between two women, but not between obedience and subversion.

This doesn't necessarily have to be wrong, because comedic effects could develop in both constellations.

It would only be very helpful if you didn't ask yourself at the end, slightly at a loss, what exactly this has to do with the working methods of the Stasi.

Haussmann initially relies on rather brute humor.

Ludger is recruited, Henry Hübchen, as his commanding officer, has a permanent charge license.

And the co-workers come across as a gathering of smack-faced jerks, nasty mustaches and ill-fitting uniforms.

A kind of socialist "Police Academy".

No idea, no matter how moth-eaten, is alien to the film.

On the first mission, Ludger seriously has to hide from the husband of the suspect in the closet.

And a note on the apartment door says: "Key under the mat".

We haven't laughed like that since Heinz Erhardt.