Der Zimmerspringbrunnen (The Living Room Fountain)

Remember Peter Timm? The director whose German-German themes ­ films like Meier (1985) (see KINO 23) and Go, Trabi, Go (1990) (see KINO 42) ­ proved popular both at the home box office and at international film festivals. This time, he’s adapted Berlin author Jens Sparschuh’s Der Zimmerspringbrunnen (The Living Room Fountain), a bestselling »Heimatroman« (homeland novel) published in 1995. The pair were tailor-made for this delightful comedy. And with Götz Schubert as Hinrich Lobek, the right actor for the right role (in photo right, with Gustav Peter Wöhler as colleague Uwe Strüver, photo courtesy Senator Film), you have an entertaining comedy with a depth of meaning.

       Back in the old days of the German Democratic Republic, Lobek was a respected and diligent worker for the »Kommunale Wohnungsverwaltung« in Berlin-Marzahn. Now, he’s unemployed and spends his time watering the plants in his apartment and looking out the window over a cityscape of identical »Plattenbau« housing. His wife, however, has work. If only he had the same... An opportunity surfaces when he answers an ad in the paper for a representative to sell living room fountains. He applies, and gets a job with »Panta Rhein« (panta rhei = Greek for »everything flows«), a company from the West that hopes to establish itself in the East as well.

       Now a living room fountain is about as kitsch as kitsch can. But since the common folk in eastern and western Germany love the same sort of kitsch, why not give it a whirl? With this quaint launching pad for the story, Peter Timm molds it into an entertaining comedy and diverting satire. For the twist comes when Lobek hits upon the idea of changing the new sales model from a »classic« ploy to »nostalgia« for the GDR. Overnight, he’s the leading salesman. What Lobek has done is to create his own »Atlantis« ­ in the middle of the fountain is a water-sprinkling television-tower, that East Berlin landmark on Alexanderplatz, and at its base is a reproduction of the borders of former East Germany. The GDR-landscape looks rather naive and entirely homemade, but that’s just the thing. Add to this the former national anthem ­ »Auferstanden aus Ruinen ...« (Rising from Ruins ...) ­ and it works like a charm!

       When Der Zimmerspringbrunnen was shown to the press, Berliners could howl with laughter at the familiar pratfalls of »Ost-nostalgie«. Whether such humor would stretch far beyond the borders of Germany is questionable, but since good fun is also poked at the foibles of salesmanship known to everyone, then why not? Further, the good-fellow, nose pulling friendship between colleagues ­ the droll Hinrich Lobek in the East versus the snappy Uwe Strüver from the West, played with warm gusto by Gustav Peter Wöhler ­ has the tragic-comic flair of fools on the loose in a Shakespearean comedy.

Dorothea Moritz