While the bar for German workplace comedy was recently set high by the recent discovery and release of the late Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s “Eight Hours Don’t Make A Day,” (1972/2018), Thomas Stuber’s big-box-store night-shift-set “In The Aisles” (In den Gängen) wafts through moods in an agreeable manner, suggestive of its origin in short stories by locally popular author Clemens Meyer. As in Kaurismäki, progress is made through calculated attention to process. (The interiors of the store are all cruel yet beguilingly geometric.) Through tenuous romance and observant details, which the film’s producer nods to as “poetic realism,” Stuber offers a showcase for the charm and emotional range of his actors, including Franz Rogowski (“Transit”) and Sandra Hüller (“Toni Erdmann”) whose flirtations start and stop and perhaps start again. The fragrance of the everyday rises without perfume. With Peter Kurth. 125m. (Ray Pride)
Ray Pride is Newcity’s film critic and a contributing editor to Filmmaker magazine.
His multimedia history of Chicago “Ghost Signs” will be published soon. Previews of the project are on Twitter and on Instagram as Ghost Signs Chicago. More photography on Instagram.
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