The Upcoming
  • Cinema & Tv
    • Movie reviews
    • Film festivals
      • Berlin
      • Tribeca
      • Sundance London
      • Cannes
      • Locarno
      • Venice
      • London
      • Toronto
    • Show reviews
  • Music
    • Live music
  • Food & Drinks
    • News & Features
    • Restaurant & bar reviews
    • Interviews & Recipes
  • Theatre
  • Art
  • Travel & Lifestyle
  • Literature
  • Fashion & Beauty
    • Accessories
    • Beauty
    • News & Features
    • Shopping & Trends
    • Tips & How-tos
    • Fashion weeks
      • London Fashion Week
      • London Fashion Week Men’s
      • New York Fashion Week
      • Milan Fashion Week
      • Paris Fashion Week
      • Haute Couture
  • Join us
    • Editorial unit
    • Our writers
    • Join the team
    • Join the mailing list
    • Support us
    • Contact us
  • Competitions
  • Facebook

  • Twitter

  • Instagram

  • YouTube

  • RSS

CultureMovie reviews

Next Door

Next Door | Movie review
10 October 2021
Joseph Owen
Avatar
Joseph Owen
10 October 2021

Movie and show review

Joseph Owen

Next Door

★★★★★

Release date

1st October 2021

Daniel Brühl supposedly sends himself up in this sly and insinuating two-hander, which is part attempted self-satire, part festering thriller. Set mostly in a single bar, located in the slowly gentrifying East German district of Prenzlauer Berg, Nebenan depicts Daniel and Bruno as startling opposites: Brühl plays a presumably heightened version of his actorly self, and Peter Kurth his poker-faced nemesis. The film lacks the requisite molten contempt for its two hands but maintains useful tension between them. Kurth is particularly effective at articulating the formidable and lifelong sense of injustice that fuels Bruno’s burning animus, providing the dramatic foundation upon which events pivot.

Relying on a series of thematic dualisms, Brühl’s directorial debut pits together East and West Germany, the local and global, wealth and dispossession, isolation and community, and, probably most importantly, celebrity and inconsequence. These broad strokes manifest themselves in the main characterisations, which never quite break free of their wider social and cultural moorings. They’re written top-down, and the screenplay, penned by Daniel Kehlmann from Brühl’s original concept, isn’t sharp or reflexive enough to negotiate realities beyond the follies of either fame or drudgery. Daniel remains the star with a personality of placeless transience, anxiously preparing his audition for a secretive and big-budget superhero role; Bruno persists as the bitter rock sediment, encrusted at the bar, etched into Germany’s recently divided past.

The confined environment makes for acute contrasts in politics and lifestyle, which leave the air heavy and stifling. Brühl’s image selection is generally safe and unchallenging, although some of the dialogue is discomfortingly presented as if it were directly addressed to audience, in a theatrical nod to its chamber piece stylings. Daniel is almost the biographical imitation of Brühl (Bruno notes that his big break came in an internationally successful drama made almost 20 years ago). First shown in the pose of bourgeois vanity, with a perfect home and family, Daniel exercises on his rowing machine, performs a verbal self-exorcism in the shower, and frets over an acceptable shirt. His glass residence with private elevator is an incongruous blight for his neighbours, his extended phone use and demonstrative earpiece indicative of his status as a wandering effete. 

But the state-of-the-nation commentary is mostly leaden and pointed. The film works best through Daniel’s faux humility and Bruno’s vulnerability, on the unappealing details of ham in aspic, and within the uncanny forcefield that returns Daniel time and again to the drinking hole, populated by figures who appear nearer to demons than flesh. Bruno is certainly the devil himself, whose eternal agony seemingly amounts to hearing someone else’s laughter. Daniel, tortured and in increasing despair, no longer sees the funny side – his unrooted fantasy is set to be extinguished. And as the wry mid-credits scene suggests, the joke is in fact circular, and it’ll soon come round again.

★★★★★

Joseph Owen

Next Door is released in select cinemas on 1st October 2021.

Watch the trailer for Next Door here:

Related Itemscomedydaniel bruhldaniel kehlmanndramagerman filmreviewsocial inequality

More in Movie reviews

Top Gun: Maverick: “A triumph that should be enjoyed in the largest possible cinema”

★★★★★
Filippo L'Astorina, the Editor
Read More

Emergency

★★★★★
Umar Ali
Read More

The Road Dance

★★★★★
Matthew McMillan
Read More

Rhino

★★★★★
Catherine Sedgwick
Read More

The Innocents

★★★★★
Emma Kiely
Read More

Benediction

★★★★★
Lauren Devine
Read More

This Much I Know to Be True

★★★★★
Andrew Murray
Read More

The Quiet Girl (An Cailín Ciúin)

★★★★★
Andrew Murray
Read More

Vortex

★★★★★
Joseph Owen
Read More
Scroll for more
Tap

Movie and show review

Joseph Owen

Next Door

★★★★★

Release date

1st October 2021

  • Popular

  • Latest

  • TOP PICKS

  • Alice Cooper at the O2 Arena
    ★★★★★
    Live music
  • Decision to Leave (Heojil Kyolshim)
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • The Innocent (L’Innocent)
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Stephen Fry enters the Radio Times Hall of Fame in conversation with Alan Yentob at the BFI Imax
    Cinema & Tv
  • Roma Bar Show returns for a second edition in Rome next week
    Food & Drinks
  • “It was a really precious process”: An interview with Maksym Nakonechnyi on Butterfly Vision
    Cannes
  • Stranger Things: Season Four
    ★★★★★
    netflix
  • Henry VIII at Shakespeare’s Globe
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • Stars at Noon
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Nostalgia
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Nostalgia
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Fiend in Notting Hill: “Risks that pay off”
    Food & Drinks
  • Alice Cooper at the O2 Arena
    ★★★★★
    Live music
  • Michael Kiwanuka at Alexandra Palace
    ★★★★★
    Live music
  • The Innocent (L’Innocent)
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
The Upcoming
Pages
  • Contact us
  • Join mailing list
  • Join us
  • Our London food map
  • Our writers
  • Support us
  • What, when, why
With the support from:
International driving license

Copyright © 2011-2020 FL Media

Nothing but Thieves at the O2 Arena | Live review
The Last Duel | Movie review