The Infidels Agonist 2009

Romantic movie fans can rejoice now: There is a happy ending here. While you sit in the cinema for two hours not knowing if anything will come of it, I can reassure you right away: Yes, in the end, everyone cuddles together. I usually don't care whether the people on the screen all die or reside happily ever after in charming city villas and have three to five well-behaved children. The point is mainly that with a happy conclusion to the film's plot, the willingness of the moviegoer beside me to come up for a coffee afterwards increases. It's similar with perfume: Those who smell good have advantages.

However, before the main characters find each other, a good hour and a half passes. We are dealing with a rather complicated story, at the beginning of which our main character, Magnolia, has a disastrous relationship with a jerk named Cumin. They scream at each other the whole time, and you don't understand why they endure each other for so long. The story is so against the nature of things that you wonder why you even let yourself be dragged into the film. (Then you remember: The coffee afterwards.) So you endure it stoically and think: You can't switch channels here.
At some point, Cumin lies dead on the ground, and the audience slowly begins to see the light. While you blamed the guy the whole time for nothing working out, it was actually Magnolia who was the nuisance causing quite a stir. Here, the story takes a turn from social drama to a coming-of-age film. Magnolia meets someone (Lavender), who becomes her (purely platonic) friend and teaches her to rein in her temper - without having any erotic interest in the beast himself.
Magnolia only becomes truly normal when she is willing to compromise a bit for true love. Ultimately, she finds happiness in a ménage à trois with Tonka, a sweet guy from the Caribbean, and Amber, who has always been fascinated by women's skin.
Here, you also realize that the plot is not about romance, but about sex. No one is looking for love here, but rather maximizing pleasure. It is precisely because of its last part that the film received its 18+ rating. Whether one wants to endure the first hour and a half, in which the main character just complains and is completely incapable of relationships, is something everyone has to decide for themselves. The ending isn't really revolutionary either, but at least there are some quite attractive people who get naked in the breathtaking landscape of Labdachouli. Seeing someone like Magnolia in this constellation doesn't happen too often, which could be because the director must understand his craft incredibly well to skillfully stage his main character. This is not always achieved here.

Why the DVD is only available in the incredibly ugly and overpriced collector's edition is something only the marketing strategists of the film distributor know.