In Juli

In Juli, is a german, adventure, romantic comedy. After the naive trainee teacher Daniel buys a mayan sun ring that is supposed to bring him the woman of his dreams from Juli, the street vendor and aspiring artist who is in love with him, he is inspired to take a chance on life. Through the mysterious workings of fate and the need for a story worth being told as a movie, Juli and Daniel end up taking a trans-continental trip to Istanbul together. As one can guess, Daniel realizes at the end of his trip that true love was sitting next to him below a mop of dreads. Stylistically, the film is fantastical and experimental. Reality is forgone in the name of love. It is very post modern in its use of soundtrack as well. In Juli is enjoyable to say the least. It has the right amount of cheesy and the right amount of conflict. Rather than try to forward some bull-shit notion of love to the audience, it is simply concerned with telling a surreal, Dhali-esque, love story. However, in the process of seeing hippies fall in love, the ideas of space and movement are also explored. In Cache and Dirty Pretty Things western Europe is the destination. These films are concerned with those who moved east to west. In the process of doing so, they lost power and visibility. They became weaker and more exploitable. In Juli operates on an opposite spectrum. By taking a journey east, Daniel is “freed” from his middle class sensibilities. “Non Europeans” go west in search of professional opportunities. “Europeans” go east in search of spiritual opportunities. This is indicative of who can travel Europe freely and who cannot. For a very limited group of people, there is unlimited mobility. However, For “Europe’s propertied Nationals” the borders are abundant. Though In Juli is an innocent film, it is interesting how freely Daniel roams Europe and evades the proper law enforcement. At one point he is arrested and the jail door is literally left open for him to walk out of.