The Year I Lost My Mind [Jahr des Tigers] *** (2017, Alexander Tsypilev, Julien Lickert, Patrick G Boll) – Classic Movie Review 12,840

Tor Iben’s creepy 2017 German suspense thriller The Year I Lost My Mind [Jahr des Tigers] focuses on a lonely young Berlin gay man who becomes dangerously obsessed with a stranger whose house he broke into.

Prolific writer/director Tor Iben’s creepy 2017 German suspense thriller The Year I Lost My Mind [Jahr des Tigers] focuses on a lonely young Berlin gay man who becomes dangerously obsessed with a gay stranger. It might be unkind to say so, but Tom is deservedly lonely because, frankly, he’s a bit of a nutter, obsessed with wearing masks, among other very strange things.

After encountering him during a home invasion burglary, Tom (Alexander Tsypilev) begins stalking and then provoking the handsome youngish university lecturer Lars (Julien Lickert). Tom waits for him to go out and starts to break in and pay regular visits to his home. When Lars finds out about Tom, and what his game is, he tries to turn the tables on him, but that leads to a shock confrontation.

The Year I Lost My Mind [Jahr des Tigers] is totally weird throughout with a weird ending, and it keeps the faith. It is a bit of a wow! It plays on various thriller memes and comes up with something completely original. Tor Iben writes and directs with all the courage of his uber-strange convictions. The masks, of course, could be a metaphor, or maybe not. We get to see interesting bits of non-touristy Berlin. Tor Iben knows how to capture our attention and keep us interested. There’s never a dull moment.

As Lars is a lecturer, we get a bit of a lecture on gay history and homophobia addressed to his students but actually of course to the audience. It’s a bit squeezed in maybe, along with the Berlin Gay Museum, but it is welcome, and it does work. And so does the whole film, using odd as its ace card, enough to creep everyone out but not enough to destroy involvement and entertainment.

Tor Iben really knows what he’s doing, what to do, when to do it, and how far to go. And so do the actors. Both ideally cast, Julien Lickert is suitably upright and sympathetic and Alexander Tsypilev is suitably sweaty and repulsive. Yin and Yang.

Tor Iben was born in 1959 in Hagen, Germany, and is also known for Cibrâil [The Visitor] (2011), The Passenger (2012), The Year I Lost My Mind [Jahr des Tigers] (2017), Orpheus’ Song (2019), and Das Phallometer (2013).

Julien Lickert reappears in Tor Iben’s Orpheus’ Song (2019),

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