Good Bye Lenin!

Rental, retail and DVD, Cert 15
4 out of 5 4

Wolfgang Becker's comedy is as original as it is charming.

A boy protests against the hardline East German regime. As he is clubbed and bundled into a police van, his watching mother collapses. She is in a coma for eight momentous months. A doctor warns that any shock might kill her while the wall comes down and the DDR ceases to be. So her son resolves to keep everything the same, to preserve a fantasy East Germany while outside a new, unified country is taking shape.

This may sound an impossible task for director and co-writer Becker to keep going as much as for the son (played with intensity and conviction by Daniel Brühl). But with considerable ingenuity and light comic flair, the film is kept afloat and between the chuckles, it manages to be poignant both for the complex plot and for the relationship with the boy's mother. Katrin Sass is never played as a communist stooge but as an intelligent woman who believes in the regime despite some serious doubts.

Around all this, Becker constructs a classy family drama with a believable love affair between Brühl and his mother's nurse. It all throws up a host of memories for anyone who went to Berlin pre-1990. I was turned away at Checkpoint Charlie for, among other things, possessing a copy of this paper. It all seems longer ago than 15 years, but Good Bye Lenin brings it all back as well as being one of the best comedies of the year.

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