Crazy

Sixteen-year-old Benjamin, held back a year, is sent to boarding school with partial paralysis down his left side. Neither his grades nor his body improve at the new school; instead he acquires a group of friends and belongs somewhere for the first time. Hans-Christian Schmid directed, from the autobiographical novel Benjamin Lebert wrote at seventeen, a bestseller in Germany. The best thing the film does is not put the disability at the centre. Benjamin's condition is described but the story is not built on it; adolescence, friendship and first sex proceed alongside it. The tone is calm and observational, keeping away from the dramatic underlining common in German youth films of the period. That the book was actually written by someone that young shows on screen: the characters' speech has not been corrected by an adult ear. It did well in German cinemas and took youth film prizes. Who it is for: viewers who like quietly told coming-of-age films. Who it is not for: anyone waiting for incident; the film passes through a year and offers no great turning point.