Romed Wyder’s romantic comedy has been described by as a Swiss version of Green Card. Quasi-revolutionaries and best friends Arno (Vincent Coppey) and Maurizo (Pietro Musillo) share a squat in Geneva. Maurizio has a residence permit through his marriage of convenience, but his present girlfriend Nina (Alexandra Tiedemann) is facing deportation without the appropriate papers. Maurizio convinces Arno, who has never expressed any interest in women, to marry Nina so that she can stay in the country. Arno accepts, but he then proceeds to fall in love with Nina while Maurizio is away for a few days. When Maurizio returns, the three try to find a solution to this unforeseen complication. Much of what feels fresh here is due to first-time writer and director Wyder setting his story in Geneva, a city in a country usually defined by bourgeoisie ‘neutrality’ and not a place where you’d expect to find an active counterculture. It is the setting that not only informs the characters but makes their potentially old-hat conflicts seem so unpredictable and inventive.
tzerland, 1999. Colour. English subtitles. 87 mins.