Cloudy Clouds [Trübe Wolken] ***½ (2021, Jonas Holdenrieder, Devid Striesow, Valerie Stoll) – Classic Movie Review 12,522

Jonas Holdenrieder stars in the rich and strange 2021 German thriller film Cloudy Clouds [Trübe Wolken] as a quiet teenage loner who loves secret paths, old buildings, whispered conversations and left-behind bags. A teenager is found dead in the forest… 

Jonas Holdenrieder stars in director Christian Schäfer’s rich and strange 2021 German thriller film Cloudy Clouds [Trübe Wolken] as 17-year-old quiet loner Paul Nebe, who likes secret paths, abandoned buildings, whispered conversations and left-behind bags.

He’s watching and waiting. He suddenly appears in people’s houses or rooms without warning, Oh yes, there he is, just there. He looks through their stuff, takes items and photographs things. His mysterious nature catches the eye of his pretty actress wannabee classmate Dala Brünne and of his art-loving, wheel-chair using teacher Mr Erich Bulwer, both driven by their own hidden desires and longings.

Paul seems like a nice boy, but he’s really, really not. Maybe he’s just a bit offbeat and oddball. No, actually he’s a heartless, cold-blooded killer. The police discover a teenage boy’s dead body in the forest, and, as Paul often roams around there, he comes under suspicion of having killed his new, gay classmate. So that he doesn’t seem a weirdo, Paul tells the police that Dala is his girlfriend. Another conceited but friendly classmate, Max (Max Schimmelpfenni), who fancies Dala, helps Paul out by telling the police about an elderly man he claims to have seen on the school grounds.

Paul has a family that seems on the surface kind of normal – his apathetic dad Per-Ulrich Nebe (Peter Jordan), his near-hysterical step-mother Sylvia (Claudia Geisler-Bading) and his 14-year-old brother Silas (Aurel Klug) – but of course is actually very peculiar indeed. As expected, things are not going to turn out alright for them, not at all. It’s called Cloudy Clouds, not Happy Families. Did I mention that the school director and the police inspector are dodgy-seeming too?

Cloudy Clouds is an accomplished, stylish, extremely creepy German mystery thriller, quite mesmerising and compulsive throughout, with a very confident main performance by Jonas Holdenrieder that carries it nicely, out-weirding everyone else in a truly weird environment. Nice, polite and normal though he seems, Paul is a very bad role model, and he’d make a very bad friend.

With his blank stare and creepy demeanour, Holdenrieder embodies the ‘boy without qualities’ idea to perfection. He pitches it well, doesn’t over-do it, keeping the character this side of seeming normal. He’s got to pass for normal. It’s a showy kind of role, though easy to over-play, and the film is all about him, so the actor’s gotta be good, and Holdenrieder is very good.

Well, that is, you could call it a mystery thriller, and it is much easier to sell like that, but it is really a study in extreme alienation or isolation, along the line of Repulsion, or just plain psychotic madness, along the line of Psycho. Are they thrillers? Well not so much really. Quite disturbing and unsettling, Cloudy Clouds is a brain-banger that puts you in a strange headspace that is hard to shake off, and will certainly make you look again at the people around you, for a little world re-evaluation.

It is not very violent, and there is more or less no sex, nudity or swearing, but you would definitely give it an 18 certificate. There is one gay character, briefly, but there is no real gay element to the film.

The eerie, doom-laden music is by Christopher Colaço & Philipp Schaeper, helping to create the film’s tense atmosphere. It was shot by cinematographer Sabine Sina Stephan in 30 days from the beginning of July to mid-August 2020 in Cologne, Krefeld and Gießen and the surrounding area, both the inventive photography and dislocated locations also adding much to the tense atmosphere.

It premiered in January 2021 at the 42nd Max Ophüls Preis Film Festival (online) and was released in German cinemas on 24 February 2022.

Director: Christian Schäfer, his second film after Dieter Not Unhappy (2017).

Stars: Jonas Holdenrieder, Devid Striesow, Valerie Stoll.

The screenplay is written by Glenn Büsing.

It runs 105 minutes.

The cast are Jonas Holdenrieder as Paul Nebe, Devid Striesow as Erich Bulwer, Valerie Stoll as Dala Brünne, Max Schimmelpfennig asMax Gundermann, Peter Jordan as Per-Ulrich Nebe, Claudia Geisler-Bading as Sylvia Nebe, Aurel Klug as Silas Nebe, Valentino Fortuzzi as David Schatterhain, Sascha Nathan as Inspector Stöbhaas, Viola Neumann as Mrs. Hüller, Oliver Nägele as Mr. Kupferschlag, Moritz Führmann as Falk, Bettina Kaminski as Erika Hauck, Gerhard Fehn as Director Störbrock, Sybille J Schedwill as Ms Mischer, Lina Maria Spieth as Petra Kladde, Simon Andreas Littwin as Leon, and Janina Sachau as Mrs. Schatterhai.

Trübe Wolken translates as Cloudy Clouds, or maybe Dismal Clouds would be better.

© Derek Winnert 2023 – Classic Movie Review 12,522

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