Fabian: Going to the Dogs (2021)

Fabian: Going to the Dogs captures Weimar Berlin with the intoxicated immediacy of a night you can’t quite forget—glittering, desperate, funny in flashes, and quietly haunted by what’s coming. Dominik Graf shoots the city like a living organism, cutting and swirling through clubs, streets, and private rooms with a bold, unpredictable visual rhythm that makes the era feel less like history and more like a pulse. Tom Schilling anchors the film with a wounded intelligence, while Saskia Rosendahl gives the romance a sharp, modern ache: tender, ambitious, and painfully realistic about what love costs when survival and success start making demands. It’s not a cozy period piece (there’s frank nudity, heavy smoking and drinking, and a pervasive sense of societal unraveling), but if you want a daring, emotionally charged portrait of people dancing at the edge of an abyss, this one lingers.

Fabian: Going to the Dogs is aiming for a decadent, end-of-an-era portrait of 1930s Berlin, mixing romance with social decay and the creeping dread of what’s coming. When it works, the atmosphere is vivid, the performances are committed (Tom Schilling and Saskia Rosendahl sell the longing and compromise), and the film has a bruised, literary melancholy that feels true to its period. But it’s also indulgent: the pacing can drag, scenes sometimes feel staged rather than lived-in, and the emotional urgency gets diluted by meandering detours that don’t always add insight. If you want a tightly gripping historical romance or a sharply immersive Berlin fever dream, this may test your patience—though if you’re up for a moody, talky, occasionally awkward character study with frank nudity and a lot of smoke and nightlife, you’ll find plenty to admire.