Buy Heavy Girls

Heavy Girls

Year: 2011

Now at Festivals
This movie is currently playing at film festivals.

When new special editions or price reductions are announced.

Synopsis

In this unorthodox quirky gay love story (shot in the style of a homemade movie), two bearish men ("heavy girls") begin to see in each other the key to other possibilities in life.

3 Reasons To buy this film

Winner of a Special Jury Award for Bold Originality at the 2012 Slamdance Film Festival.
There are no scrawny, young twinks to be found in this flick. Despite being called "girls" in the title, this movie is about real-looking men.
Director Axel Ranisch shoots the film as if it is a home video - giving it a realistic, almost documentary-like feel. He even cast his own grandmother in a leading role.

Review

Sven, a single man in his mid-forties, has shared his entire life with his mother Edeltraut. They inhabit a small Berlin apartment and even share the same bed! During the week while Sven works at a bank, Daniel, a married home-care worker, lovingly cares for Edeltraut who suffers from dementia. One day in a moment of mischievousness, she locks Daniel out on the balcony and disappears. In their search for her, feelings of loss, love, loneliness and romance surface, turning Daniel and Sven’s lives upside down.

Heavy Girls, is consistently surprising, charmingly innocent and a delight to watch. Ruth Bickelhaupt, director Axel Ranisch’s 89-year-old impish grandmother (in her debuting role) shines as the playful Edeltraut. Yet, it is the uninhibited Heiko Pinkowski (Sven) who appears in one of the most absurdly innocent nude scenes ever seen, set to a solo violin concerto, that captures the delicate fragility of all of the individual characters in this powerful and intimate film.

-- Carol Coombes