Charming and brutal

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

"Shed My Skin", or "Aus der Haut", is an excellent movie, number 2,799 in my personal digital library.I give "Shed My Skin" an IMDb rating of 8.0.However, after reading the reviews of "Shed My Skin" in IMDb, I must wonder if I viewed the same film as the two fellow reviewers currently listed as of this writing. So, being a reasonable fellow, I enlisted the attendance of two native Germans originally from Halle, Saxony-Anhalt, to sit with me in my second viewing in order to critique my critique and thereby keep me honest. Incidentally, both of these fellows graduated from Heidelberg University with multiple advanced graduate degrees, and both of these fellows are probably still employed by The Federal Intelligence Service or in German the Bundesnachrichtendienst ( BND), the foreign intelligence agency of Germany equivalent to the CIA, directly subordinated to the German Chancellor's Office in Berlin, and therefore I must assume that they are not idiots. But they are gay, and they have been a couple together from their gymnasium days in Saxony-Anhalt.As a retired career U.S. Navy intelligence officer age 94, I never inquire too closely into the current employment status of former and or current intelligence officers from any country.I asked this pair to view this film after determining that neither had seen or even knew about "Aus der Haut" before my invitation, but I suspected that the story contained within this movie mirrored their own personal history during their gymnasium studies, given that they are of the same age and I knew that they have been together since those tender years. As it turned out, I was right. In spades.In a nutshell, both of my young visiting friends and the young movie protagonists had the same unequal social-economic status as adolescents, both had enlightened and ultimately supportive families consisting of one or two parents, both were bright and creative, and both of these completely decent and wholly honorable guys were then struggling with the problems attending their being gay and being in love. With each other. Although, as in the movie, both dealt with these matters in very different ways, indeed.Over a long evening the three of us ended up viewing "Shed My Skin" twice, focusing on casting, script, action staging, directing, and the usual technical aspects of successful moving-making. At the end of which my friends wanted to assign an IMDb rating of 10 to the movie, but out of prudent moderation and my personal recognition that they were unduly enthused by seeing what they saw as a cinema-graphic retelling of their personal teenage lives, I demurred with an IMDb rating of 8.Parenthetically, I am fluent in German, as well as in several other languages, and both of my guests are fluent in English, as well as in many other languages, so we all agreed that the downloaded subtitles were quite adequate. And the three of us all agreed that the other two IMDb reviewers needed to have their heads examined.May I be permitted to respectfully recommend that you see "Shed My Skin" or "Aus der Haut"?

"Aus der Haut" or "Shed My Skin" is a German television movie from March 2016, so by now this one isn't even a year old. It runs for slightly under 90 minutes just like German small screen releases do most of the time. The director is Stefan Schaller and I really loved his Kurnaz film. The writer is Jan Braren and he is mostly known for "Homevideo" by now. But lets take a look at this one here. It tells us the story of an adolescent who discovers that he may be a homosexual. A lot of the film feels as if it is much more about how everybody around him perceives this and not really about the character's inner state of mind. Or maybe the actor just wasn't good enough to portray it convincingly. We see his fellow students react to it, we see his parents, we see teachers and we even see other students' parents react. Merlin Rose has a fairly respectable body of work for his age, but still he did not really win me over. Same goes for the other younger actors in here who play mostly his classmates. It's all very generic and stereotypical and nothing too creative. The movie was better when Michelsen and von Bülow are on screen mostly and also when the film focuses on their relationship. These aspects are what kept me from giving the film an even lower rating as there was almost no quality to the core plot and it never became interesting or a film where you would really cheer for a character and care for his well-being. On the contrary: Almost everybody in here is unlikable, which is not a problem at all and does not define a bad movie, but you still have to make these flawed characters interesting and I don't think they really succeeded here. There are solid moments here and there, also one involving the son's teacher for example or a meeting with the parents, even if that one was also pretty stereotypical sadly. Oh yeah and Johannes Krisch was absolutely wasted in here. He is a much much better actor than what he showed us here. It wasn't his fault, but it was because of the material he had to work with in both quality and quantity. The ending is also not one that really makes up for everything before that. German film may not have improved as drastically as American when it comes to small screen releases, but still there are more than a handful pretty good television works out there from recent years. This is not one of them. I give it a thumbs-down and don't recommend the watch.

EDIT (2017/09/20): After I read another review of this film, which recommends to "let my head be examined" - because this film deserves at least an 8, if not a 10. I can not and will not leave that without a comment. The review I was reading told relatively little about the film and its plot - it was more about the real love story of two Germans. Perhaps this results in the difference. I tried to evaluate the film objectively. And based on my described below aspects of this film, it can not get any higher rating. Being an actor to play a gay person is not an easy task. And (pitily) the protagonist does not succeed at all. In many places in the film, the reactions of the actors are so incredibly irrational and exaggerated that I wonder what message the film should convey. Perhaps, with stupidities, one receives the necessary attention from his parents or lovers? Okay, it's a feature film. But that does not justify the omnipresent over-dramatization. The almost convulsive attempt to steer towards an escalation bothers me. There are many films that tell a similar story (but way better) - for example "Summer Storm", "Jongens", "North Sea Texas" and "Free Fall", just to name a few. Watch them and then we can talk again about the content quality of "Shed My Skin".PS: You don't miss a lot if you don't watch this movie.ORIGINAL REVIEW (2016/03/18): The film does not shrink against the offensive approach to the issue of homosexuality. Even at the present time it is still a taboo when it comes to processing in movies. Nevertheless, it largely dispenses with clichés. The video image is clear, the camera work is aimed fully at the "third-person-view".Overall, the film is worth seeing, but some character traits appear attached and not logically concluding at scenes before and behind on. Mostly you get the feeling watching puppets acting. Coincidences are brought partly demanded, resulting chain reactions are not fully settled and the final leaves many questions unanswered. The intention of the filmmakers is recognizable, but they still seem to have not sufficiently dealt with the complex topic. The film adheres to long on trifles and loses himself slightly out of sight. Also background information are scattered only scarce.Conclusion: A good strip which promotes tolerance, but cannot cope with the full range of "other" sexuality.