Free Fall

Marc (Hanno Koffler) is a promising police academy trainee and expectant father when he first encounters fellow trainee Kay (Maz Riemelt). Their relationship begins with a scuffle but the two men quickly warm to one another.

For Marc, a heavy smoker whose lack of athleticism is pulling his grades down, Kay proves an excellent running coach. But there is, the viewer soon realises, something else going on entirely. A rough sexual fumble confirms as much. Is it love or merely bi-curiosity? And will Marc’s homophobic colleagues and extended family find out before he does?

Free Fall arrives with the helpful tag "The German Brokeback Mountain" and, sure enough, director Stephan Lacant's shares certain key themes and a melancholy trajectory with the Ang Lee film. As with Messrs Ledger and Gyllenhaal, the sex scenes are muscular and the surrounding world (Marc and Kay work as part of a riot police team) is far from rainbow-friendly.

The film’s sharp, unsentimental aesthetic wisely works to mute some of the more melodramatic potential. Koffler and Riemelt are excellent as their characters swan-dive further away from family and friends. “We didn’t raise you to act that way,” scolds Marc’s mother. His colleagues are rather more demotic in their exclamations of disgust.

There are a few clumsy missteps in this otherwise polished production. Marc's pregnant girlfriend (Katharina Schüttler) is written and performed in a shrill register that seems at odds with the film's mannered pace. A scene in which she angrily jumps her former domestic partner in the shower might have been culled from a John Waters flick.

There are more violent reprisals from Marc and Kay’s alpha-male colleagues. Supervisors choose to look the other way. If we wondered, initially, why anyone would stay closeted in a contemporary Western workplace with laws prohibiting discrimination, we soon wonder no more.

It’s a central dilemma that feels real even when the mechanics seem clunky.