Die Mitte der Welt

seen at the London Flare Festival on 21 March 2017

Louis Hofmann as Phil and Jannik Schümann as Nicholas star in Jakob M. Erwa's adaptation of the celebrated German coming of age novel by Andreas Steinhöfel, given Centre of My World as its English title.

Phil and his twin sister Dianne (Ada Philine Stappenbeck) live with their mother Glass (Sabine Timoteo) in a grand house called Visible, never having known their father. Phil returns from a summer camp to find the always volatile household even more tense than usual, though neither his sister or mother will explain why. In the meantime he falls head over heels in love with Nicholas, a new boy in his class at school, whom he thinks he may have met in the street once many years before. The two boys embark on a passionate physical relationship even though Phil is constantly aware that Nicholas may not reciprocate his own level of devotion.

There are several strands to the film; Phil's story is obviously the most important, but both Glass and Dianne have interesting stories as well, and the film has been criticised for failing to adapt successfully the multi-stranded narrative form of the novel. Without having read the book, it is not really possible for me to comment on this, except to say that there is quite a weight of narrative for the film to bear. (One critic suggested a mini-series would have been a more appropriate vehicle to develop all the narrative threads.)

Given the somewhat eccentric family situation - both in psychological terms, and in its physical setting in a very grand old-fashioned house - and the wealth of back story, and Phil's voiceover narrative and the occasional filmic tricks to register his heightened emotions using slow motion sequences and unexpected colour filters, the film succeeds an an interesting and at times very poignant coming of age story. Everyone is completely matter of fact about Phil's sexuality, so that on that front his only real problem, and the hard lesson he has to learn, is the nature of commitment and the often frustrating enigma of another person. However, the residual family problems also prove very demanding and contribute to the crisis in his young life

The two leads are very personable and very well able to carry the attention given to them (in particular Louis Hofmann whose viewpoint we almost always share), and Sabine Timoteo is excellent in the difficult role of Glass, a vexatious mother for teenagers who do not always relish her refusal to conform.