Single By Contract

Mia, who wants to be a pop star, is handed a contract: no boyfriend, and if there is one, it stays hidden. The company is selling her single image. She signs, then falls in love, and has to run two lives at once. The film is not interested in a love story. It is interested in the ownership of an image: her private life is no longer hers but part of a marketing plan. The film explains that to a young audience in terms it can follow. The form is musical youth comedy: scenes built like videos, backstage passages, fast cutting. Marc Rothemund directed. He had been Oscar-nominated for Sophie Scholl; this is at the opposite end, light and aimed at the youth market. Anna Fischer plays Mia and Kostja Ullmann her boyfriend. Who it is for: viewers who like German youth films and stories about the music industry. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a hard critique of that industry. The film recognises the problems and then resolves them all far too easily.