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| And Along Come Tourists |
A triumph at this year's Cannes Film Festival,
And Along Come Tourists marks an important milestone. As with
Just An Ordinary Jew (which the Festival is screening again due to popular demand), it too is a contemporary and part autobiographical story, but set in Poland, in the infamous township of Oswiecim.
Now overrun with visitors to the nearby former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz, it is hardly the place that Sven, a young pacifistic German, expects to be sent to do his compulsory civil service.
Stranded and alone, one of his main tasks is to look after an elderly camp survivor, the cantankerous Stanislaw Krzeminski, who treats the young German with disdain. Luckily, a budding relationship with an attractive Polish interpreter, Ania, makes Sven's everyday life more bearable.
But, as the weeks go by, his growing affection for Ania, and his developing compassion for the much put-upon Krzeminski, lead to some troubling realisations for which there are few resolutions.
This is one of the most subtle, insightful and unexpected films to come out of Germany in recent years.
