Europe, She Loves

One might think that, in times when the EU is drifting apart politically, its people would also have contrasting worries. Europe, She Loves interweaves the stories of four couples on the edge of Europe: Siobhan and Terry in Dublin want to live without drugs; in Tallinn, Veronika wants Harri to get on better with her son Artur; Penny wants to leave Thessaloniki and the older Niko to work in Italy, and newly enamoured Juan and Caro in Seville barely think about the future. Their everyday lives are full of similar problems and their relationships are an escape from the social and economic woes of their countries. Excessive parties and drug-taking are all par for the course and the protagonists have no qualms about allowing the camera to observe intimate moments right up to the point of sex. Jan Gassmann and cinematographer Ramon Giger get impressively close to these couples and succeed in episodically capturing the essence of their personal circumstances in just a few images. Following their feature film Off Beat (Panorama, 2011), they again explore attitudes to life, this time recording in semi-documentary intimacy the sensitivities of a generation of twentysomethings in Europe.