3 rooms/kitchen/bath

A move is actually always the beginning of a new chapter in life. It's not always essential changes that come with a change of home, but moving into a new home is always drastic. This is also the experience of eight friends who meet again and again during moves all over Germany: there is Maria (Aylin Tezel), who moves from Freiburg to Berlin for her boyfriend Philipp (Jacob Matschenz), but who also has the feeling that Philipp is not yet wholeheartedly involved in the relationship. The reason for this could be his best friend Dina (Anna Brüggemann), with whom he spends far too much time in Maria's eyes. Philipp's best buddy Thomas (Robert Gwisdek), on the other hand, moves out of the shared apartment with his buddy and from now on lives with his girlfriend Jessica (Alice Dwyer). And this proves to be far less relaxed than the casual cohabitation in the men's shared flat.

Philipp's older sister Wiebke (Katharina Spiering) also faces a new chapter in her life when she moves into a shared flat with Dina. She realizes that this wasn't necessarily a good idea when a man she falls head over heels in love with ends up in bed with her roommate. And Swantje (Amelie Kiefer), the chick in Philipp and Wiebke's family, also breaks camp in her native Hanover to study in Stuttgart. Many turbulent events - and yet the year of big changes has only just begun...

3 Room/Kitchen/Bath reunites the Renn, wenn Du kannst team in front of and behind the camera. Jacob Matschenz, Robert Gwisdek and Anna Brüggemann, who already harmonized perfectly in the wonderful predecessor, seem like old friends again and with this coherent chemistry make the sometimes somewhat dragged out events believable and extremely entertaining to watch. The three are supported by a no less convincing ensemble, from which especially Alice Dwyer stands out. It's just fun to follow the stories of these characters filled with life by the cast, even when there are some predictable clichés or dramaturgical hangs.

The script that the Dietrich siblings and Anna Brueggemann have co-written again isn't quite as clever and biting as Run If You Can. Some very nice ideas are a bit overused and the mixture of drama and comedy, which worked perfectly in the predecessor, seems a bit strained in some scenes. But these are only small flaws in an otherwise very good film, which plays comprehensibly with the entire emotional palette of its protagonists and also deals with big emotional issues in a refreshingly unagitated way. Especially at the end, there are moments in Jessica's life that other filmmakers would have turned into an entire drama of consternation. Brüggemann, however, wraps up this twist without any great emotional outbursts or complicated conflict resolution, which surprisingly makes the whole thing more effective.

It is aspects like this that make the film so worth watching, despite its minor flaws. The fact that at the end you are actually left wanting to revisit these characters at some point to see what has become of their lives is a testament to how well Brüggemann has succeeded in involving the viewer in the lives of his characters. 3 Room/Kitchen/Bath is at times extremely funny, at other times touching or even romantic, without ever straying into the realms of kitsch. Intelligent, excellently observed and somehow completely relaxed entertainment cinema from Germany, which deserves to get attention not only in art house cinemas. Worth seeing

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp