Das Gold der Liebe
Director: Eckhart Schmidt
Writer: Eckhart Schmidt
Cast: Alexandra Curtis, Allegra Curtis, Marie Colbin, André Heller, Regina van Tom, Hermann Strobel, Andrea Wurstbauer
Part of: Viennale
Seen on: 3.11.2015

Plot:
Patricia (Alexandra Curtis) hears the voices of the band Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft (D.A.F.), calling her to their concert. She makes her way there and tries to get in, despite the fact that she doesn’t have any money. Somehow she is buzzed into the backstage area though. Walking through the door, she finds herself in a shifted reality where violence blooms,  blood flows easily and Patricia is hunted by something.

Das Gold der Liebe is probably not a film for everyone with it’s dream logic and zeitgeisty music. But I enjoyed it and particularly its visuals.

I can’t say that I entirely understood the film (I also fell asleep for a few minutes in the middle – it had already been a long festival), but I doubt that it’s a film that can really be deciphered anyway. Nevertheless I would like to watch it again when I’m more at peace (and when it isn’t approaching midnight) and see if I can make more sense of it the second time around.

Instead of making you understand, Das Gold der Liebe takes you on a trip, not only through supernatural weirdness, but also through nightly Vienna in the 80s. The film was shot before I was born, so I loved getting this look at my city back then which was simultaneously very different and not different at all.

With the confused and confusing plot line, the strong imagery, the music (mostly done by D.A.F., a Neue Deutsche Welle band most known for their song Mussolini) and the very stylized acting (making it impossible to judge whether anybody in this film is actually a good actor, but it doesn’t really matter anyway), Das Gold der Liebe creates an atmosphere that pulls you into this dreamlike, or rather nightmaresque, world. I thought it was worth seeing and experiencing this world, but I can totally understand if it’s not everybody’s cup of tea.

Summarizing: If the film sounds intriguing to you and if you can find a copy, you should definitely see it.