We all know teenagers like Tobi; someone who horses around all the time, is continuously playing tricks on everyone and more often than not finds himself in mock-fights with his friends. People like Tobi are always friends with everyone because their simple presence seems to cheer up the room. It might be difficult to imagine that they, too, could have stormy feelings and unspoken emotions underneath their happy appearance. In the German melodrama Sommersturm, Tobi's feelings are not just explored, they are its raison d 'être.

 

Tobi (Robert Stadlober, from Crazy) will spend a good part of his holidays at a rowing summer camp with his friends. They include his best friend and rowing partner Achim (Kostja Ullmann) and the girls Sandra (Miriam Morgenstern) and Anke (Alicja Bachleda-Curus). Away from their parents and with the added benefit of skin-exposing swimwear, Achim tells Tobi it might be time to experiment a little with that supreme symbol of adulthood: sex. He has set his eyes on Sandra and thinks that Anke might be interested in more than friendship with Tobi. Much to his dismay, Tobi is a little bit shocked by this idea and starts to wonder why he would be. Achim’s logic does make perfect sense so why does it feel so strange? Is he perhaps afraid to lose Achim’s friendship if Achim starts spending more time with Sandra than with him? Or is he jealous of Sandra? And what would that mean?

A storm of thoughts and feelings slowly but steadily builds in Tobi’s adolescent heart and head, something to match the worsening weather conditions at their campsite. To complicate matters even more, a rivalling rowing team called Queerschlag (German students: spot the pun), exclusively made up of homosexual teens, settles next to Tobi and Achim’s camp. Their apparent ease with their own sexuality both intrigues and frightens Tobi and seems to make his thoughts about Achim both clearer and more confused than ever.

 

When the storm breaks and feelings felt become feelings spoken, Sommersturm is at its best. Both a classical allegory and a contemporary coming-of-age melodrama, the screenplay, written by director Marco Kreuzpaintner and Thomas Bahmann, plays well on both levels without compromising either. The story is of course not new, but that does not take away anything from the excitement because it is well told.

 

Kreuzpaintner has a painterly eye for both visual and in storytelling details. Though the point of view in Summerstorm lies close to Tobi, it not use this as an excuse to sketch all other characters with a couple of broad brushstrokes. These are all adolescents who are trying to figure out how to be grown-ups and even the members of the Queerschlag team, who seem to have at least pinned down their sexuality, are not without problems of their own.

 

Sommersturm was shot by cinematographer Daniel Gottschalk (who also shot Kreuzpaintner's first film Ganz und gar from 2003) and his work is fundamental in underlining the allegoric qualities of the story. There is a sequence of shots towards the end of the film that is truly beautiful: we see the rain and wind pound on the locations around the campsite we have previously seen populated by our rowers, when the sun was still out. The camera slowly hovers over these now deserted places, as if searching for the characters that lent them their beauty and vitality. It was not the sunshine that made these places look gay, but rather the colourful people that had so much fun there living out that undefined space between child and adulthood. In the process, most of them have discovered something about themselves that will have to outlast even the strongest summer storm if they want to continue to be able to look at themselves in the mirror. 

 

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