The only son has just moved out. But it still doesn't look like empty nest syndrome for Sophie (Julia Koschitz, “How good is your relationship?”) and Paul (Florian David Fitz, “The Nickname”). Instead, the super-successful lawyer and the unemployed archaeologist organized their first foursome: The other participants' joint choice fell on the fiery Spanish woman Mia (Lucía Barrado, “Fall For Me”) and the hut Andi with the strapping hikers. Calves. Sophie has already padded the push-up bra particularly generously, while Paul has had a not entirely painless intimate shave – and a tapas buffet peppered with little suggestions has already been prepared. There's even a spontaneous blowjob with a bolero as a foreplay before the big evening.
But then the double coitus interruptus follows: for the married couple, who were just so keen to experiment, because Paul secretly unloaded Andi and substituted his best friend Lukas (Friedrich Mücke, “Wunderschön”) instead; and for the audience, because after the charming opening you suddenly find yourself in an off-the-shelf comedy like a chamber play. The relationship baggage of model father Paul and career woman Sophie has been building up for 20 years – and now on this one crucial evening it is spilling out of every nook and cranny of their shared Munich designer apartment. Of course, all of this has to be chewed through first before you end up in the box as a quartet later that night (even if only for a disappointingly short time).
At least for one evening, things are supposed to get really hot again in the marriage of Sophie (Julia Koschitz) and Paul (Florian David Fitz).
After directing a few episodes of the Sebastian Fitzek thriller series “The Therapy” last year, Iván Sáinz-Pardo returns with “The foursome“ is now presenting his feature film debut as a director. He wrote the script together with Torben Struck (“French for Beginners”) and his leading actor Florian David Fitz. Unlike the chamber play mega-hit “The Perfect Secret”, this time it is not based on an Italian model, but on a Spanish model, namely the swinger comedy “Instant Love” from 2019. And believe it or not, the much-loved Thermomix Paul, who is afraid of pleasure and is a perfect symbol of the piety of German bed sports, also appears in the Spanish original.
What's also left over for long stretches is the feeling that you're watching a filmed play rather than a movie. Although “The Foursome” has a high-quality, high-gloss look, when Mia and Lukas are replaced by Paul and Sophie in a bar, the camera seems to move past the two lovebirds in exactly the same way many times as they flirt. And if you're looking forward to the fact that the eponymous swinger game will definitely give things a little more momentum, it's already over before it really begins. The homoerotic sprinkles are certainly well-intentioned as court curtsies to the spirit of the times, but in this case they seem cringe mainly because they are never alluded to again before or after.
When the four bedfellows finally meet, hardly anyone looks particularly happy – let alone excited.
Despite everything, “The Foursome” offers entertaining cinema entertainment for fans of imported chamber comedies such as “The First Name” or “The Perfect Secret” (by the way, all of them starring Florian David Fitz, purely by coincidence). However, this is less due to the clever dialogues or striking gags, but rather to the likeable star quartet, which also harmonizes extremely well, especially within the combinations of Koschitz/Fitz and Barrado/Mücke: after all, you honestly keep your fingers crossed for both couples, and that is at least not the worst prerequisite for an old-school relationship.
Conclusion: “The Foursome” only briefly pretends to be a sex comedy, but then it quickly turns out to be a rather old-fashioned relationship box game. This is saved above all by the stars in a good mood across the finish line – which is not too far away given the pleasingly crisp running time of only 90 minutes.