"JGA" is the new trash film by director Alireza Golafshan and another monument to the death of German cinematography.
The story is quickly told, but unfortunately also often heard. A bachelorette party goes differently than planned when a trio of singles, the titular Jasmin (Luise Heyer), Gina (Taneshia Abt) and Anna (Teresa Rizos), learn that their marrying friend Helena (Julia Hartmann) is pregnant and therefore unable to join them for a fruity farewell in the spirit of the bitter thirty-something group. No alcohol, no excessive straining and care for the soon to be born child gets in the way of the three girls in such a way that joy for the soon to be mother girlfriend can hardly be feigned. Sitting drunk in a dive and then a kebab store, the three girlfriends, who are almost constantly bad to each other, nevertheless decide to implement the already paid Ibiza party trip. But on the spot not only everything goes wrong that can go wrong, instead it comes even worse. Stolen and without a place to stay, the three have to take refuge in the vacation home of Jasmin's ex-boyfriend Tim (Dimitrij Schaad), of all people, who is celebrating his own bachelor party with his equally bad friends on the island. Since Jasmin is still very much mourning this one, awkward situations, embarrassing stories and radical lack of dignity on the part of all the protagonists ensue. The whole effort ends with a clichéd nervous breakdown at Helena's wedding and a circle-closing, half-open happy ending, during which Jasmin reunites with an acquaintance from a bus stop at the beginning of the film and what appears to be a conversation perceived as clever by screenwriter and director Golafshan develops. Even the last of the last single women seems to still have hope for a relationship.
This comedy plays up the theme of love, but merely plays on hedonism and superficiality in typical German film fashion, and in the process is also mired in the quagmire of modern non-conversation, dominated by slurred pronunciation, a small vocabulary and inane intonation, but above all by conversations devoid of content. The comedic element of the film is supposed to find representation through unattractive male strippers in a children's playground, self-abandonment that invites strangeness and brief interludes with sexy hotel managers, thieving beach stars and drug-dealing advocates of political correctness, while the dramatic plot of the film actually means themes such as love pressure, problems in long-term relationships and fear of loneliness, when in fact friendships are portrayed as a modernist experience of distance, love is seen as a purely egoistic self-fulfillment project, and loneliness even in the closest moments finds description as the essence of German interpersonal relationships. Stupidity is chosen as a sympathy bonus and superficiality is described as the status quo, and the addition of the two is supposed to make a German comedy.
Golafshan has not done German film any favors with this subterranean level, but the fact that the flick was born out of precisely this lack of level is also one side of the coin, after all, the film was once again produced primarily through subsidies from state and thus taxpayer-funded art foundations. Their raison d'être and peculiar value is certainly undeniable, but if films like "JGA" constantly see the light of day in cinemas as a result, it should give pause for thought with regard to the distribution of quality. Perhaps a democratization would be necessary here, for instance by presenting the scripts under discussion to the film-savvy people for preliminary consideration before they are simply given the OK by professional apathetic people who use up funds. The alternative could be that the filmmakers themselves are trusted with a small revolution against their own dreariness, but with every production like "JGA", hope fades in this regard and instead of weddings in the cinema, the burial of German cinema will soon be celebrated.
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