Workaday blues

REGULAR GUYS (ECHTE KERLE)

Germany, 1996 
Director: Rolf Silber 
Stars: Christoph M Ohrt, Carin C Tietze, Tim Bergmann

Christoph (Christoph M Ohrt) is a coffee-and-donut cop who prefers tv and cars to his fiancé, who in turn hooks up with a bodybuilder and kicks Christoph out as a result. Without a place to stay, he somehow encounters Edgar (Tim Bergmann), a gorgeous gay mechanic (wtf?) whose bed he wakes up in the next morning. Whether he’s badly hungover or revolted by what he thinks has been a drunken anal invasion, Christoph spends the next scene in a frantic state, trying to vomit in the toilet, and avoid all the pictures and statues of priapic nude men that decorate every square inch of Edgar’s flat. Things get complicated - and madcap! - as Edgar’s lover and mother Helen take turns dropping in unexpectedly, and a begrudging friendship starts to develop between the ad-hoc odd couple. 

Lame second-act plot points obediently escalate the action: Edgar is not just any old mechanic, but a retuner of stolen cars. Guess what Christoph is on the trail of: a stolen car racket. Christoph stands in as his female colleague’s “fiancé” when she needs to look her best during a real estate inspection, but their playacting turns to a real-life romance after one too many faked intimacies in front of the estate agent. Elsewhere, tinkling piano music overlays romantically lit, pseudo-lesbian female scenes, while the all-male action is scored with cheap rock music, and full of fast-food eating, loveable klutzes.  The central gay character is impossibly well groomed but also a resident of the criminal fringe, drawing his straight-laced prey into a crazy world of vice and innuendo. 

So, there’s no great merit in Regular Guys, unlike another mid-nineties German odd couple/gay love triangle comedy, the very good Maybe, Maybe Not. In one scene, Christoph and Edgar argue over AIDS, with Christoph paranoid of infection while at Edgar’s house, and Edgar insulted by the assumption. A later scene shows Christoph coming around to some sort of change, by accosting his judgmental and anti-gay colleagues for their own equivalent “deviances”, such as handcuffing and beating up their wives, or leaning on hookers for free quickies. Regular Guys is that kind of film.