From Summer Storm.
_______
Coming-out stories are like penises: every gay man has one. That’s why there are so many films on the subject. Sometimes coming out can be a ‘Beautiful Thing’ but more often it’s filled with sturm und drang—or in the case of Marco Kreuzpaintner’s German drama, ‘Sommersturm’ (‘Summer Storm’) und drang.
Co-written by the director and Thomas Bahmann, it’s the story of Tobi (Robert Stadlober, who looks like Michael York a few years before Cabaret), the star of his Bavarian rowing team.
It’s hard to see why Tobi’s so popular. From the time we meet him he’s moody, constantly mooning over his best friend Achim (Kostja Ullmann). It’s amazing what two boys will do comfortably together as long as each believes the other to be straight, as when Tobi and Achim masturbate side by side. Both are dating girls, Anke (Alicja Bachleda-Curus) and Sandra (Miriam Morgenstern) respectively, but Tobi expresses concern that the girls will get in the way of their friendship if they marry them.
Afraid his friend can read his love and desire all over his face, Tobi lies about having gone all the way with Anke. Then they take off for a week of summer camp, which will include the national amateur rowing championships. The girls’ team, including Anke and Sandra, goes along too.
Among the opponents at camp are a team of butch Saxon women and a team from Berlin, the Queer Schlag (Queerstrokes). The reason for the name they proudly wear soon becomes more obvious than the youths themselves: they’re all gay. This bothers the Bavarians to varying degrees. The most homophobic, Georg Schorsch (Tristano Casanova), whose father sponsors the team, is targeted for seduction by Malte (Hanno Koffler), who has a thing for straight boys.
Tobi catches the eye of Leo (Marlon Kittel) and vice versa. After his sexual initiation Tobi doesn’t show a lot of interest in Leo, which is good practice for the future when he won’t say hello to a former trick on the street. (Or is that just American gays?) Life is so complicated for teenagers.
Summer Storm becomes needlessly complicated too, in a sequence where an actual storm reflects and intensifies the emotional storm going on in several characters. It’s the kind of old-fashioned melodramatic cliché Fassbinder loved to emulate.
When the storm clears and everyone decides which team they’re rowing on (a comic surprise there), it’s time for the Big Race. As this is obviously not Kreuzpaintner’s main concern it’s handled perfunctorily and filmed with minimal coverage, blowing the chance to get the audience involved in the outcome.
In this regard the filmmaker, still in his 20s, is like the teenagers he portrays: so preoccupied with sex he can’t focus on anything else for long. That’s obvious from the crotch-level shots of exercising youths in the opening sequence. Viewers who find sex more stimulating than sports will relate. (Yes, I related.)