Das Einmaleins der Liebe: A Messy Identity Shuffle

Is it worth your time?

Honestly, only if you have a soft spot for dusty, black-and-white comedies where people run in and out of doors. If you want a plot that makes sense, skip it. If you like watching folks confuse themselves on purpose, you'll probably get a kick out of it. People who need logic will hate it.

It’s a bit of a scramble. There is this store manager, right? He spends more time changing his personality than I do picking out socks in the morning. Everyone in this village seems to have an identity crisis. It’s supposed to be romantic, I guess, but it mostly feels like a group of people who are really, really bored.

Watching this reminded me of the frantic energy in Employees' Entrance, but way less corporate and way more obsessed with who is who. The Austrian countryside looks nice enough, but it’s mostly just a backdrop for people to lie to each other.

Odd little moments

• There’s a scene where a character pivots so hard, you’d think they were trying to snap their own neck.
• The store manager’s mustache seems to have more personality than half the cast.
• Nobody ever just talks like a normal human being. They always have to perform.

I caught myself wondering why any of these people actually like each other. They spend the whole time testing each other’s feelings, which sounds exhausting. It’s like they read a manual on how to be complicated and decided to ignore every single page.

The pacing is all over the place. Sometimes it drags like a wet blanket, and other times it’s zipping along like someone’s life depends on it. It’s definitely not a masterpiece, but it has this weird, airy charm that keeps you watching even when the script is clearly running on fumes. 🤷‍♂️

Maybe it’s just the era, but there is something fascinating about how they treat deception as a cute little hobby. It isn’t deep. It doesn’t try to be. It’s just a bunch of folks in the country messing with each other’s heads for an hour or so. If you have nothing better to do on a rainy Sunday, give it a whirl. Just don't expect to remember who was who by the time the credits roll.