THE EDUKATORS
Directed by: Hans Weingartner.
Produced by: Hans Weingartner & Antonin Svoboda.
Written by: Katharina Held & Hans Weingartner.
Director of Photography: Matthias Schellenberg & Daniela Knapp.
Edited by: Dirk Oetelshoven & Andreas Wodraschke.
Music by: Andreas Wodraschke.
Released by: IFC.
Language: German with English subtitles.
Country of Origin: Germany/Austria. 126 min. Not Rated.
With: Daniel Brühl, Julia Jentsch, Stipe Erceg & Burghart Klaussner.

This German thriller may be one of the year's most compelling hybrids - a left-wing film noir. The title characters are two enterprising and idealistic young men, Jan (Daniel Brühl) and Peter (Stipe Erceg), who turn the palatial villas of Berlin's wealthy topsy-turvy. While the residents are away, they pile furniture in a pyramid and thoughtfully leave a note - "Your Days of Plenty are Numbered," signed, The Edukators. Eschewing materialism, nothing is taken. (They would be inspired by last year's documentary, The Yes Men.)

Peter's girlfriend, Jule (Julia Jentsch), assumes his nocturnal occupation is plastering posters. Like a traditional, but unassuming, femme fatale, Jule will inevitability form a triangle between the two best friends. (It's no accident that two names here recall a certain Truffaut film.) She also comes with a lot of baggage. Even though she waitresses at a posh restaurant, she's heavily in debt as a result of a car accident. After falling behind on her rent, she is evicted from her apartment. Peter asks Jan to help Jule paint her place back to its original condition before she moves out. Ever the loyal follower, Jan does so. After bonding with Jule to folk music and commiserating with her on the night she's fired, Jan reveals his and Peter's secret hi-tech skills in breaking and entering, taking her to the neighborhood of the Edukators' escapades, where she realizes she's only blocks away from the man who has financially ruined her. Instead of a crime of passion, what follows is a crime of class revenge, and like in a film noir, no plan is ever simple. (Peter returns to bail them out of trouble.)

From the eerie opening sequence to Jan and Jules' ill-fated adventure, the pacing is tight. And the resulting cat-and-mouse game furthers the suspense. However, as the trio philosophize and justify their illegal actions (which have spiraled way out of their control), the film sags as they predictably unite against "the capitalist dictatorship" and advocate Third World debt relief. However, the film regains its earlier verve, ending with a clever finish, which shares the protagonists' optimism with a dose of cynicism. Slyly satiric, it is a cell phone, certainly a symbol of globalization, which gets the pranksters in trouble. And thankfully, director Hans Weingartner leaves all of the chaos in the screenplay and not in the cinematography, shot on digital video. Instead of relying on clichéd jittery, grainy camerawork to supply the anarchy, the handheld camera movements are smooth, washed in natural light, with seamless editing. Kent Turner
July 22, 2005