"Verbotene Liebe" or "Forbidden Love" is an East German film from 1989 and if you know a bit about European history, you will realize that this 27-year-old film came out right before the Fall of the Berlin Wall. But director and co-writer Helmut Dziuba's probably most known work has basically zero political background or context. It is about a story that could have played everywhere else. This is the tale of Barbara (underage) and Georg (not underage anymore), the love story between the two which causes lots of problems because of the (not too big) age gap. This includes legal problem and problems in the community.
However, I must say that this film was not a successful achievement and I am not talking about the lack of personal context. This is not a problem at all if it had delivered convincingly in the areas it touched. People may like the authentic and realistic feel of it, but this is not in here for the entire time. It is in frequently enough to not call the film a failure, but then there are scenes when a girl gets almost raped by a gang of bikers before they run away because a fire breaks out suddenly. This is a very desperate attempt of including thrills that did come absolutely out of nowhere and did not make any sense in terms of storytelling. And then the fire shows the filmmaker's fear of going through with this garbage story-line. Oh well.. there's more scenes that are examples for this, but this is certainly the worst moment of the film. The other scenes are not as much in-your face. As a whole, this movie may have worked better, or I could say just "may have worked" at 50 minutes max without many of the boring insignificant films, not at almost 90 minutes though. But I am not sure if Dziuba had managed to cut the right scenes. I give it a thumbs-down. Not recommended. The two lead actors Brendler (very prolific career to this date) and Dahm (never in a film before or afterward) were okay though, maybe the finest aspect of the film.
However, I must say that this film was not a successful achievement and I am not talking about the lack of personal context. This is not a problem at all if it had delivered convincingly in the areas it touched. People may like the authentic and realistic feel of it, but this is not in here for the entire time. It is in frequently enough to not call the film a failure, but then there are scenes when a girl gets almost raped by a gang of bikers before they run away because a fire breaks out suddenly. This is a very desperate attempt of including thrills that did come absolutely out of nowhere and did not make any sense in terms of storytelling. And then the fire shows the filmmaker's fear of going through with this garbage story-line. Oh well.. there's more scenes that are examples for this, but this is certainly the worst moment of the film. The other scenes are not as much in-your face. As a whole, this movie may have worked better, or I could say just "may have worked" at 50 minutes max without many of the boring insignificant films, not at almost 90 minutes though. But I am not sure if Dziuba had managed to cut the right scenes. I give it a thumbs-down. Not recommended. The two lead actors Brendler (very prolific career to this date) and Dahm (never in a film before or afterward) were okay though, maybe the finest aspect of the film.