Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Netflix movie The Four of Us is a German dramedy — or “comma” if you please — that deposits two couples in a Situation and then just kind of Sees What Happens From There. Specifically, the Situation is a four-week partner swap that concludes with a Weekend Away, when they sit down to assess their Thoughts and Feelings. Will we care about the insights their “experiment” turns up? We’ll see.
THE FOUR OF US: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Janina (Nilam Farooq) is a lifestyle magazine writer and Ben (Louis Nitsche) is a struggling actor; they’re a couple. Maria (Paula Kalenberg) is a kindergarten teacher and Nils (Jonas Nay) is a real estate broker; they’re a couple. But that’s now how we first meet them. Janina and Nils hop in the car, and they’re tense and prickly together. Ben and Maria hop in the car, and they’re lovey-dovey together. The four weeks are up — four weeks of trading significant others, albeit with a strict no-sex rule. So they meet at Nils’ father’s big fancy seaside house, where they go back to their regular partners and everything returns to normal and all parties live happily ever after.
No! Ben and Maria are very much in love. And for a while, everyone’s awkward and walking on eggshells because Ben and Maria haven’t told Janina and Nils that they intend to stay together. Nils smells it coming, while Janina sits in the bathroom and stares at a positive pregnancy test. Let’s pause here to tell a little something about these characters: Janina is vying for a promotion at the magazine, and obsessed with posting flattering crap on Instagram. Ben’s lack of professional success contributes to his insecurity. Maria is badgered by her mother to have children, but she insists she doesn’t want any. And Nils, well, he’s arrogant and sarcastic, quick with an arched eyebrow and a smirk and a shitty comment, always taking bigshot phone calls for work in the middle of situations where most wouldn’t normally take even smallshot phone calls for work.
It’s no spoiler to say that things in this situation will get more complicated before they get less complicated. Secrets, revelations and vulnerabilities will be doled out at regular intervals. Some are funny, others are heavy and accompanied by sad indie rock on the soundtrack. Things get said, punches are thrown, misunderstandings balance out the understandings, vomit gets barfed, one of the four doesn’t wear a towel when they do a group sweat in the sauna, etc. And that same sad indie rock track keeps turning up like a bad penny for the moments when we’re not supposed to laugh.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Four of Us is kind of like Threesome, except with less sex and a conversation that wouldn’t have happened without a 25-year perspective on the effects of the internet on human relationships.
Performance Worth Watching: Kalenberg and Farooq show the most screen presence among the group, but their characters are too slight for us to get too heavily involved in their individual and collective predicaments.
Memorable Dialogue: “This is going to be fun.” — About 20 minutes into the movie, Nils speaks too soon
Sex and Skin: One bare gluteus.
Our Take: The Four of Us is kind of funny but not really, and kind of dramatic but also not really. One senses director Florian Gottschick letting off the gas so things don’t get too silly or too emotionally intense, and the result is fine, but only just. The Nils-centric comedy is too sour, too cynical, and that vomit scene is a bridge too far leading to Grossoutville, especially for a movie that’s trying to, I dunno, say something about monogamy and polyamory, nurture and nature, I guess? It’s too thematically shallow for it to infer anything particularly substantive.
The characters call their Situation an “experiment,” suggesting the application of the scientific method upon the unpredictabilities of the human emotional mind, although it fails to follow through on this notion. It’s complicated subject matter for sure, and the movie doesn’t seem to know how to approach it, opting for a flimsy plot twist to resolve the conflict, where a more insightful movie might opt for richer ambiguities. This movie is the equivalent of skimming Wikipedia for the key points to put in the book report.
Our Call: SKIP IT. The Four of Us shows some ambition and features a couple of performances with breakout potential. But the material is too flimsy, and therefore unmemorable.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.
