Nonureva Really Surprised!

Solidrariol Am I Missing Something?

ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

teejay4407 There have been many very positive adjectives used to described this film, and truly, I cannot disagree with any of them -- except words like "moving." I never FELT much, except for the feeling that I was sitting in school and being lectured to by a movie rather than a real live instructor. For me it was something of a "docu-drama" that put me in the position of a somewhat detached observer of an academic exercise illustrating -- with little or no excitement, the problems surrounding growing up gay.I watch movies hoping to get emotionally involved in an interesting story. I could not get to that point with this movie.

Roedy Green This movie reminds me of one of my favourite movies of all time My Life as a Dog with its matter of fact objectivity.It accurately captures the unbearable intensity of young love.The amount of athletic shirtless flesh and soft porn sex scenes might be too much for a heterosexual person to swallow, but they are not gratuitous.It deals remarkably accurately with homophobia, both by straights and by gays themselves, not overly dramatising it.It was a hard movie to watch because it reminded me so much of my own teen years, having to watch the infinitely handsome male love of my life, slow-dancing with females.The preposterously happy ending tacked on a somewhat tortured film was simply irritating. It was if it were tacked on by someone other that the original writer and director.My other main complaint is the prudishness of whomever did the subtitles. They simply left out dialog that might shock.

jan70 Being German I really appreciate the authenticity of the movie. Given the fact that director Marco Kreuzpaintner was in his late 20s when he wrote the script and that it was nearly autobiographical, the story takes place in the early 1990s when he was 17-18 years old, and everything from the worn 1970s bus they use for their journey in the beginning to the lack of cell-phones (no way for a teenager to hide in the forest nowadays - just call him and the ringing will tell you which tree he sits on ;) !!) exactly fits into this period of time. It was also the early 1990 when more and more exclusively gay-lesbian sports-clubs occurred in the bigger cities over here (for soccer, scuba-diving, rowing, etc.), and they almost always use some kind of a pun for their names("Vorspiel" (foreplay), "Gaysha" (Karate)), to name a few), just like Queerschlag did, which exists in reality to this very day. On that background, my reception of the movie is that it is more about Tobi's love for Achim than about his coming out. Tobi has fallen in love with his best friend, and that is something that is happening to young gays all the time. It is a very painful process when you have to realize that your mate, who shared his time and feelings with you for years and years, other than yourself will not be able to turn that friendship into love and sexual tenderness. Tobi's coming out at the end is only the result of the fact that he learned that Achim will never be able to love him the way he does and that he has to accept this. So after all this movie is both about accepting heterosexual and homosexual love. By the way, as some of the posters here misunderstood, the "lake" were the story takes place is in fact a 100+ years old reservoir (thats why you see the sandy banks in summer), and it is not in Bavaria, but in an area called "Bergisches Land" a few hundred miles north of Bavaria (if you want to find it in Google Earth, search for "Wipperfürth").

viverito This German film was very well done. Kudos to it's young Director Marco Kreuzpaintner for making a film with an emotionally serious underlying message and wrapping it all up in a cute entertaining well crafted package. Summer Storm is about THE summer that champion rower Tobi (Robert Stadlober) comes to the terms with his homosexuality and the temporary upheaval that it creates for him and all those around him. The metaphor of the Summer Storm that swoops in and turns everything upside down was a smart idea. Summer Storm reminded me a lot of the French film Wild Reeds Directed by Andre Techine which is more like a Summer Hurricane but hey to each his own. For some people the experience is a storm, for others a hurricane and for some maybe even a super nova.