Bullying at school is a topic in which several subjective perceptions often collide, which then quickly leads to relativization or even ignorance: the bully blames the victim, the school stays out of it, and the parents would like to help, but have yes, their own problems too, and it won't be that bad. The only person who truly knows what everyday harassment does to you is the one who suffers directly from it. But it is precisely this that Lucia Chiarla excludes almost completely in her second feature film after “Journey to Jerusalem”: the elementary school student of the title appears in the play adaptation “It's about Luis” namely only as a voice on the telephone. Instead of his personal experience, it's more about what the news of bullying does to those around him – especially his parents.
Connie (Natalia Rudziewicz) and Jens (Max Riemelt) have a lot on their minds. She regularly works unpaid overtime in her job as an architect in order to preserve her chance of getting a project manager position, while he hardly ever gets around to leaving his taxi for even half a day, ever since the app-fueled gig economy providers ruin his business. Jens even has to work at night these days because money is tight. Nevertheless, the two of them manage their private lives and at the beginning of the film they seem stressed but also happy. The fact that the school called to discuss a problem with their son Luis is initially just a footnote that Jens calls after his wife as he gets out.
Since they found out about their son's bullying, Connie (Natalia Rudziewicz) and Jens (Max Riemelt) have been increasingly at loggerheads.
Over the course of the film, the supposed nothingness of a pink backpack with unicorn embroidery develops more and more into an elephant that sits in the back seat of every taxi ride the father takes. Regardless of whether he is being flirted with by a trans woman, a group of drunk girls are puking all over his fender, or he is being condescendingly questioned about his child's sexuality by a school child: Jens cannot escape the questions and feelings of guilt that his son's bullying causes in him. Ultimately, the incidents at school also outshine the relationship with Connie; mistrust, jealousy and feelings of guilt dominate the conversations from then on.
Jens'
spoiler:
Taxi is the linchpin of the film. No matter how chaotic the plot becomes as it progresses, the camera never moves more than a few steps away from the eggshell-colored cab. Lucia Chiarla gives Paco Bezerra's play “The Little Pony” her own spin because, just like that, the film adaptation only has one setting, but this is now the Mercedes driving through Stuttgart and no longer the family's living room.
In the taxi instead of on the couch
At least on paper, a taxi is more dynamic than a living room. But the relocation isn't particularly successful: Jens' taxi turns out to be a cold, sterile place that doesn't allow much freedom of action. The dialogues, which are often poorly written and sharpened like a woodcut, lose even more of their potency when the characters are constantly squeezed into a metal cage and their hands are literally tied. Even after a dozen trips together, you hardly get a feeling for who Jens and Connie actually are. You understand what they stand for, the thesis-like film makes that MORE than clear – but the human dimension is missing. On the theater stage, forest green sofa covers, children's scribbles on the door or remote controls thrown into the corner in anger served as emotional reference points. In “It's About Luis” there are Facetime calls, roundabouts and whirring air conditioning instead. A scene that smells like a freshly opened miracle tree.
As the film progresses, the parents increasingly drift apart in their reaction to the bullying: Connie just wishes her son was “normal” and considers going to the school psychologist, while Jens increasingly develops a hatred of the inactive school administration, which is to blame again in Luis himself. After all, he was not prepared to adapt and would react violently to the alleged bullying, which even earned him a suspension in the meantime. This contrast between excessive demands, compassion and ignorance sets up a framework for conflict that the film is rarely able to realize.
The whole film takes place in and around Jens' taxi.
Despite the solid acting performances, a certain distance from the main characters cannot be overcome, also because the director tries to balance different positions against each other instead of taking a clear stand. The resolution of the story also suffers from this, relying purely on its drastic nature to flatly emotionalize and thus reconcile the previous points of contention with a murder argument. The bottom line is that bullying is bad, which is a bit poor realization after 97 minutes. The initially cultivated subtlety is increasingly replaced by a wooden hammer. Instead of letting the images of two people breaking down because of the balance between work and parenting speak for themselves, Jen's mother has to spell out why capitalism is to blame for this whole misery.
At another point, when Jens is driving an injured child to the hospital in his taxi, he makes fun of Luis' backpack lying in the trunk, but remains as politically correct as possible and repeatedly asks if he is “LGBTQIA+”. Shortly before, Connie interjected in a conversation with Jens that he should change his gender. All of this content has a right to be dealt with in this film, but it is too rarely possible to translate all of this into dialogues that actually seem human and not like keyword-formulated theses.
Conclusion: A film that tries to shed light on the consequences of bullying not on the victim herself, but on those around her, sounds interesting at first. But “It's about Luis” doesn't find any emotional access to the topic. The production is too sterile, the dialogues often sound constructed and thesis-like.