"Nicht ohne deine Liebe", which means "Not Without Your Love", is a German German-language television film from 2002, so this one is really close to its 20th anniversary and probably it happened already unless you really check out this review fairly soon after I wrote and submitted it. The movie runs for slightly under 1.5 hours and that is basically the standard running time for small screen releases here in my country, especially if we are talking ARD and all their smaller channels and ZDF too. The director is Sigi Rothemund who is really as prolific as it gets. And has been since he launches his career back in the 1960s, so he has been in his profession for over half a century now, even if there was apparently a break of almost a decade after his first project (according to imdb). Still, even if we count the mid70s as his launching point, it is such a long time. Most recent project is from 2019 now, which means he may not even been retired despite being in his own mid70s now. Also a really colorful body of work with school comedies, Gottschalk/Krüger films, softcore adult movies, Der Clown, Katie Fforde adaptations and a lot more. The only thing really missing in his body of work is decent quality. Sometimes the man also worked as writer, but not for this film here, which is not a huge surprise because he has always been more of a director and only was in charge of the screenplays for like 20% of his works. The writers they hired here are Adamczyk and Simon. For Gregor Adamczyk, it was the fist career effort and only one more should follow. That one is also from 15 years ago, so chances are minimal he will return to screenwriting one day. Annette Simon is certainly more experienced. However, if you take a look at all the pretty weak films she made since she started her career at the same time the new millennium began you will know that you should not expect quality here. her most recent work is from 2017, so maybe she is retired now as well. Would probably not be the worst decision with the massive absence of good quality in her filmography. As for the cast, there we only have two familiar faces from my perspective, i.e. the perspective of a German film buff and that says quite something. Of course, I cannot rule out that some of the other were still more famous and popular back then, but today they are now, which is especially surprising in Heikko Deutschmann's case. He did act a lot in the last 20 years, but in all the wrong projects. And same applies to some of the others too I assume because there are more pretty experienced performers in here, just not anybody you will recognize in terms of face. the two exceptions I mentioned are those that play the couple at the center of the story. Robert Atzorn and Suzanne von Borsody are no bad actors or anything. Absolutely not. It may be their talent that kept this film from being a real failure as there are some moments even, partially thanks to them, partially thanks to the script that would have deserved more than four stars out of ten. But here and there, we also have moments that deserve only two. I will elaborate a bit on those in the next paragraph.
As for a brief summary, here we have a film in which a man has a really dangerous disease that could cost him his life eventually. But he could get lucky because an ambitious relatively young doctor comes up with the idea of using a new gene therapy that could make him healthy again. So a great deal about this film is about morals. Professional morals most of all because said therapy is really new and not entirely safe and has only been tested on lab animals so far. But this is also a bit where the absurdities begin, like how the disease is not named because it does not exist in reality. Or how the doctor who eventually performs the operation does so and immediately afterwards feels the consequences when he is fired from his job. In reality, they would have interfered long before he could have done the operation, even if he had agreed to do it, which probably almost nobody would have. Add to that, some pseudo drama that the doctor says he won't be available to perform the operation and then you see from the standpoint of authenticity and realism why I am giving this film a thumbs-down. There's more of that. The second key story is the relationship between the two central actors I mentioned earlier already. This feels sometimes right, sometimes not so much. Telling us a bit about their difficulties by how the man gets a different birthday present for the daughter than they agreed on or how he tells somebody ells about his condition before he talks to his wife felt alright, but also not perfect. I mean that the other man who knows about it talks to the wife and this is how it comes out is something they often do in films, but it never works or feels realistic. But maybe it is just me thinking so because I would never speak to anybody else about it before my significant other. Anyway, I do not want to sound too critical here. The film still had its good moments. The suffering from the protagonist was well-acted and well-written I would say. It was a bit touching and easy to feel for him there. Pity that these better moments, even if they were depressing, got frequently interrupted by weaker moments again, such as the idea of von Borsody's character of how it feels so vital for her to be there and support him in his pain, more vital than anything else strangely enough. Maybe also love. Is it love? In any case, when he seems cured near the end and they are doing more again as a family, it feels right and realistic again how their relationship struggles are also a thing of the past. At least, it felt better than von Borsody's character basically breaking up with her man when he was at his worst because of how cruel and an egomaniac he was. That did not feel right. The ending, even if it was depressing again, I liked as well. We find out the therapy was only a temporary success and the illness is back and it seems very likely he will die from it. We don't find out because the closing credits roll in, so it is a bit of an open ending in terms of the health perspective, even if the tendency is clear and not optimistic, but also a somewhat open ending in terms of how these new developments will have an impact on the couple's relationship again. I do think it was realistic decision though and also adds a new interesting point to the discussion if it was right what the doctor did by agreeing to go for it and use this new therapy despite insufficient test results. The hug between the two men was fine too by the way and a bit on the heartfelt side. I liked Atzorn here, did not really have him on the radar anymore, but I could check out more from him in the future. As for this film, the weaknesses are still more frequent than the strengths, so I give the outcome a thumbs-down, even if it is not a failure by any means. The title, however, is terrible, sounds like some cringeworthy Rosamunde Pilcher adaptation. I think 2002 was still a year before the time in which ARD (Degeto) kept dishing out really week romance-focused films for the small screen one after the other. So the sad news is that the quality went down considerably for the rest of the first decade of the new millennium in terms of television releases here in Germany. This one we got here is not good, but also not too bad. I still suggest you skip the watch. Not recommended.
As for a brief summary, here we have a film in which a man has a really dangerous disease that could cost him his life eventually. But he could get lucky because an ambitious relatively young doctor comes up with the idea of using a new gene therapy that could make him healthy again. So a great deal about this film is about morals. Professional morals most of all because said therapy is really new and not entirely safe and has only been tested on lab animals so far. But this is also a bit where the absurdities begin, like how the disease is not named because it does not exist in reality. Or how the doctor who eventually performs the operation does so and immediately afterwards feels the consequences when he is fired from his job. In reality, they would have interfered long before he could have done the operation, even if he had agreed to do it, which probably almost nobody would have. Add to that, some pseudo drama that the doctor says he won't be available to perform the operation and then you see from the standpoint of authenticity and realism why I am giving this film a thumbs-down. There's more of that. The second key story is the relationship between the two central actors I mentioned earlier already. This feels sometimes right, sometimes not so much. Telling us a bit about their difficulties by how the man gets a different birthday present for the daughter than they agreed on or how he tells somebody ells about his condition before he talks to his wife felt alright, but also not perfect. I mean that the other man who knows about it talks to the wife and this is how it comes out is something they often do in films, but it never works or feels realistic. But maybe it is just me thinking so because I would never speak to anybody else about it before my significant other. Anyway, I do not want to sound too critical here. The film still had its good moments. The suffering from the protagonist was well-acted and well-written I would say. It was a bit touching and easy to feel for him there. Pity that these better moments, even if they were depressing, got frequently interrupted by weaker moments again, such as the idea of von Borsody's character of how it feels so vital for her to be there and support him in his pain, more vital than anything else strangely enough. Maybe also love. Is it love? In any case, when he seems cured near the end and they are doing more again as a family, it feels right and realistic again how their relationship struggles are also a thing of the past. At least, it felt better than von Borsody's character basically breaking up with her man when he was at his worst because of how cruel and an egomaniac he was. That did not feel right. The ending, even if it was depressing again, I liked as well. We find out the therapy was only a temporary success and the illness is back and it seems very likely he will die from it. We don't find out because the closing credits roll in, so it is a bit of an open ending in terms of the health perspective, even if the tendency is clear and not optimistic, but also a somewhat open ending in terms of how these new developments will have an impact on the couple's relationship again. I do think it was realistic decision though and also adds a new interesting point to the discussion if it was right what the doctor did by agreeing to go for it and use this new therapy despite insufficient test results. The hug between the two men was fine too by the way and a bit on the heartfelt side. I liked Atzorn here, did not really have him on the radar anymore, but I could check out more from him in the future. As for this film, the weaknesses are still more frequent than the strengths, so I give the outcome a thumbs-down, even if it is not a failure by any means. The title, however, is terrible, sounds like some cringeworthy Rosamunde Pilcher adaptation. I think 2002 was still a year before the time in which ARD (Degeto) kept dishing out really week romance-focused films for the small screen one after the other. So the sad news is that the quality went down considerably for the rest of the first decade of the new millennium in terms of television releases here in Germany. This one we got here is not good, but also not too bad. I still suggest you skip the watch. Not recommended.
