Life Is All You Get

Director and co-writer Wolfgang Becker weaves a loose, wry and finally tender tale around Jan (Vogel) and his meandering negotiation of the various people in his life: enigmatic lovers, grown-up drop-outs, washed-up lonely parents, irresponsible (incomprehensible) siblings, drifting immigrants, and men with bad haircuts (for this is Germany). A neater film would have given the script another couple of drafts, but the ill-defined narrative is part of the tentative fly-by-night charm. Being about the quixotic, unpredictable paths to reconstructing a social family, it sees opening up to someone as, in the end, an affirmative act of faith and optimism.