LOVE STEAKS, the second feature from German filmmaker Jakob Lass, is an off-kilter romantic comedy with a difference, in which all the chaos and emotional intensity of young love filter into the film’s jagged and elliptical style.

Clemens (Franz Rogowski), a shy, introverted young man, gets a job as a masseuse at a luxury hotel and spa complex. The film begins as a comedy of awkwardness as this ingenue struggles with work and fights off the advances of a flirtatious, middle-aged female client – the camera-work alternating between jittery handheld close up shots and detached stationary compositions, emphasising the deadpan punchlines of his clumsiness and pratfalls. Lara (Lana Cooper), a trainee chef who works in the hotel kitchen, seems in many ways to be Clemens’ opposite number. She is confident, good at her job, and a practical joker. The two first meet each other when she and the kitchen staff break into the spa after hours and throw the poor Clemens into the hotel pool. Further encounters follow and the two engage in a dance of combative flirtation as Lara seeks to forcibly drag Clemens out of his shell. They slip away from work together, play jokes on each other and on their colleagues, go for walks along the beach and slowly begin to let their guard down.

The film perfectly captures the mood of working a crummy job and taking solace in the company of the one person you can stand. Like Greg Mottola’s ADVENTURELAND, young relationships are portrayed with equal parts romance and melancholy. The film’s environment, a beautiful but desolate stretch of the German coastline, is artfully contrasted by cinematographer Timon Schäppi to the claustrophobic confines of the hotel. The beach is depicted as a wild, elemental place, reflecting their own relationship, where the couple wander together, finding companionship in their isolation.

STEAKS isn’t a simplistic, sentimental depiction of love conquering all, but an honest portrayal of the casual dishonesty and barriers…

It is made clear early in the narrative that Lara has a full-blown drinking problem. The film portrays this without judgement, candidly detailing her blackouts and bad decisions. Her addiction may stem from childhood trauma, alluded to but never foregrounded. She’s able to hide it from her colleagues, but not from Clemens, and it’s this discovery that pushes the protagonist out of his passivity and into action to help her in her crisis.

STEAKS isn’t a simplistic, sentimental depiction of love conquering all, but an honest portrayal of the casual dishonesty and barriers to connection that addiction can throw up. There is a dark irony in how Clemens’ well-meaning attempts to help Lara end up putting her career in jeopardy. The film does suffer from some slack pacing, as the story drifts free of traditional structure – with the characters’ problems building to a crisis only late in the film. But the dynamics of the shy naïf and the outspoken rebel are upended in the go-for-broke final sequence, when aggression, tenderness and catharsis all collide and synthesise. It’s a break-up and make-up unlike any other, and a valedictory send-off to this charmingly odd couple.

Love Steaks screens on 30th Aug at 18.15 at the Cambridge Film Festival.

httpvh://youtu.be/ymv25xFLuV4