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Directed by Dani Levy
With Mark Herring, Meret Becker, Veronica Ferres
Germany, 2010
86 min./German with English Subtitles
What do you get when you cross a screwball comedy with an existential crisis? A new Dani Levy movie, that’s what. Levy, the Berlin-based Jewish writer-director (Go for Zucker! SFJFF 2005; My Fuhrer and Freedom of Expression Award, SFJFF 2007), has created a lovable, pitiable alter-ego in Alfi Seliger, a nebbishy and hypochondriac filmmaker trying to get back in the game even while his wife is cheating on him, his kids don’t like him and he suspects he has colon cancer. Even his psychiatrist thinks he should justend it all. But the heightened comic reality of Life Is Too Long soon gives way to surreal existential questions: Is Alfi’s life authentic or is the cosmic joke that he is actually trapped inside a movie (a Dani Levy movie, no less)? Such themes place this delightful and mind-bending romp somewhere between Fellini’s 8 1/2 and Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories—only goofier. As Alfi, Markus Hering is superb, in a film that features a who’s who of the German movie firmament, including Veronica Ferres (Saviors in the Night, SFJFF 2010) as the pushy wife of a big producer, Udo Kier as Alfi’s shrink, and onetime international bombshell Elke Sommer as (get ready for this) Alfi’s Jewish mama. —Peter L. Stein
Preceded by Grandpa Looked LIke William Powell, 5 min
Sometimes a memento only reminds you how little you actually know someone. Such a thing happened to director David Levy when he came to possess his Grandpa Herman’s high school autograph book from 1924. But can one object bridge the divide between two disconnected souls, two generations apart? —Joshua Moore
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