European Films

Auschwitz is the unlikely background for a love story between a German and Polish youngster in German director Robert Thalheim’s Am Ende Kommen Touristen (And Along Come Tourists). Part of the Un certain regard line-up in Cannes, the film toys with a possible heavy subject matter in a contemporary and light-hearted way without seeming frivolous or disrespectful. Above all, it seems to suggest that remembrance is necessary but that life goes on, something that the somewhat irreverent title also underlines (the German "Am Ende" literally means "At the End"). Seen the subject matter, distribution beyond German-language countries may be limited to the festival circuit.

 

Sven (Alexander Fehling) has opted for a pacific substitution of his military service and is placed in Auschwitz to help out at the youth hostel and teaching facilities of the former concentration camp. One of his main tasks is to look after and help out the old Mr Krzeminski (Ryszard Ronczewski), a camp survivor who spends his last days repairing artefacts from the site, such as left-behind suitcases. Ania (Barbara Wysocka), one of the lovely and – very conveniently – German-speaking local girls works in the museum as a guide and sublets a room in her apartment to the young and sexy German.

 

Not everyone looks at Sven with such benevolent eyes, however, including Ania’s brother, who remarks early on in the film that it seems that "the German army has returned to Auschwitz". Tensions are also in the air with Mr Krzeminski, though they might be due to his cantankerous persona and the fact that Sven – unknowingly – finished his carton of milk on the day he arrived. His controversial handling of the suitcases he is responsible for is handled in a clever sub-plot that finds just the right tone between humanity, compassion and a firm reality-check.

 

The romance between the two youngsters is equally well-calibrated and always just on the right side of soapy clichés. To a certain extent it even benefits from being somewhat schematic and predictable since it seems to underline that such everyday idylls take place even in places that knew such horrors, the idea being that time goes on and places evolve. Talheim's low-key approach is the key element that ensures that everything is respectfully pitched at exactly the right one.

 

It seems to have been a conscious decision from the writer-director to relegate the holocaust to the background and instead focus on the human relationships and the nascent love story, which is bound to be criticised by some but feels organic and quite normal for people of the protagonists’ age. The film also has its own response to the matter in the shape of Mr Krzeminski, who at one point remarks that anyone interested in the holocaust "should just watch Schindler’s List", which is about as far as possible a film from Am Ende kommen Touristen, even though Talheim’s work is clearly not a antithesis of Spielberg's work either.

 

Cinematography and editing are both nimble, with a slightly grainy, colourful and appropriately loose look that reflects the age and state of mind of the young lovers. Like in Talheim's debut film Netto, acting is strong from all involved but especially from the young male protagonist. Fehling, like Sebastian Butz in Netto, is a natural whose uncomplicated demeanour does not hinder a subtle emergence of more complex emotions under the surface. Playing an easy-going yet responsible young man stranded in the place where his countrymen of some generations back were responsible for one of Europe’s biggest tragedies is probably a lot harder than it sounds, but Fehling seems to carry it off without any visible effort.