听 
The last folk who will want to watch this will be (former) East Germans. As they are particularly aware of the vast economic shock and cultural unease of being tied to the West, and read about the resultant slew of problems in their daily papers, they are unlikely to want their faces rubbed in this excruciating experience of ultra-gloom. They are almost bound to stay away. So will the rest of you.
Set in an unspecified German city by the Polish border, "Abendland" concentrates on the sad figure of Anton, whom we first see sitting in (presumably) a dole queue before he erupts and smashes an administrator's head into a wall. He is then given a single banknote by his girlfriend, with whom he performs brief, mechanical sex, and he proceeds to spend it in assorted bars during the night. She also goes out on the town and, like Anton, endures all manner of cheerless encounters. No-one, by the way, gives even the tiniest smile at any time.
This is, in fact, all so pointless and, if humour were the aim, you'd take it for a parody of gloom. Harry Enfield might just want to take notes. Composed almost entirely of lingering close-ups of miserable faces, "Abendland" makes its point from the off and, refusing to develop, presents us with lengthy scene after lengthy scene of Anton hunched in a bar, squatting disconsolately on a bridge or staring sadly out of a train window (the former East Germany, it seems, is now so callous and cynical that those who mug him on the train don't even flee but sit down opposite him!). You'll be heartened to know that one of the few signs of action is Anton smashing a beer can into the kitchen table. It will please those who, like the director, mistake silence for profundity. For the rest of us, "Abendland" is the very definition of pretension.
