In the Aisles is a German film I watched with English subtitles.
A young man, Christian, who has a rough past gets a job at a warehouse store. He forms relationships with his shift mates, especially his supervisor in Beverages, Bruno. And he falls in love with Marion who works in Sweet Goods, who is unhappily married.
This arthouse film was a respite from the very saccarine-Hallmark-type and studio-typical stories I've been watching lately. This story is refreshingly different, It takes some dark turns, but isn't a sad story, it isn't a love story, and it isn't a story of redemption. It's just an artsy snapshot of Christian's life and the two new people who come into it through his work.
The production is authentic. The music supervisor had a good ol' time: She soundtracks the beginning of the worker's shifts with the waltz, The Blue Danube. There's a random rap instrumental inserted in a longer forklift driving scene that was fun. And I don't know how a Son House song got inserted into this film, but there it was and it somehow fit. The idea of the ocean and beach was a running theme throughout the story that was unobtrusively woven through so that you had to try to notice.
I enjoyed this film, I could very easily watch this again, and although I find subtitles hard to recommend to other people, I would recommend this to a few adventurous movie watchers. It was on the fun side of the Nitpix scale and I give it three stars***.
I'm glad I took a chance on this DVD I checked out from the library.
