Summer in Berlin

Andreas Dresen's 2005 film follows two women who are friends and live in the same Berlin building. Nike does home care work for the elderly; Katrin is unemployed and lives with her son. Sitting on the balcony in the evening with a bottle of wine is how each of them closes the day. The film moves not through events but through their lives drifting in different directions: one starts a relationship with a truck driver, the other's unemployment stretches on and her drinking grows. Wolfgang Kohlhaase's script keeps the dialogue ordinary and direct, and Dresen never dresses up the camera. It belongs to the strand of German cinema that shows Berlin as an ordinary place to live rather than a tourist backdrop. Who it's for: viewers who like character-led European drama that is thin on plot and strong on observation. Who it's not for: anyone who needs the story to arrive somewhere and end cleanly.