Lola + Bilidikid

Love, death, hatred, romance, fierce drag queens, coming out stories, underground club scenes... You'll smile, laugh and cry during this beautiful movie set in the Turkish Ghetto in Berlin.

This film accomplishes what it sets out to do, and it does so in a beautiful way. Not everyone can know what it feels like to be Turkish in Germany, and this movie communicates that feeling without sacrificing the feeling of being within the lives of the people it's about. Why do so few films achieve this?

Within its specificity, you also discover its universality. How many immigrants of color (from all over the world) in white-dominated countries (all over the world) will see something of themselves in this film? This film has the feel of a classic.

I know some people may feel the film is too depressing, or too dependent on gratuitous violence and on queer stereotypes that many of us may want to push into the past. Maybe we can reflect on the possibility that the stereotypes we may want to avoid aren't really a thing of the past, and the depression and violence the film refers to is quite real and current.

Don't get me wrong, I liked Lola + Bilidikid. But I think it could have been a lot better. I find that the movie is not always very convincing. Yes, you're troubled and disturbed by the movie but you're left with a sour taste. What I liked the most was the way that the movie shows the daily life of the gay culture in Berlin and the difficult integration of the immigrants in the modern Germany.

7 out of 10.

Excinting labyrinth of desires, illusions and freedom's skin. Exploration of ambiguous universe and many questions about facts, gestures or games without end. Fall from artificial paradises and slices of original silence. Bones of old wars and innocence of long expectation.

It is a cruel trip in a harsh way of life. Expresion of special search and everyday lost. It is interesting the relation of characters with Turkish memories. The image of run, the limits of refuge, the routine and the dialogs, the touch of disappointed and the hope of a chimeric future.

In fact, the atmosphere of "Lola + Bilidikid" is the same like in latest Romanians movies ("Stare de fapt", "Marfa si banii", "Pepe si Fifi", Prea tarziu", "Terminus Paradis"). Same moral crisis, same disillusion, same stupid games, same torpor.

But the essence of film is the search of Murat. Hero of Dostoievsky, he lives beyond the secrets or lies. He is projection of his personal discoveries and for him the dreams are more that fiction. He hopes.

I was disappointed in this film after reading the other comments here and thought I should add my own.

This movie may be an accurate depiction of what life in Berlin for gay Turks is like but it is on the whole a depressing movie. Perhaps Germany is still at this point, but this movie has many of the overtones of the self loathing gay movies that were prevalent in this country in the 50's and 60's. Others have said that there are touches of West Side Story and Rebel Without a Cause about this movie but those weren't exactly feel good movies either.

A few more moments spent on the nascent relationship between Murat and the waif-like German boy that he meets could have made all the difference.

Ah well… I've always been a romantic.