Marcel Gisler returns to the universe he captured with such subtle wit in Tagediebe (Hanging Out/PFA '86), that langorous, stranger-than-paradise world of young people who kill time for a living and are very good at what they do. Gisler's style evokes the fluidity and intensity of feeling of the old New Wave and the startling punk of the new; at age twenty-eight, he films from within the culture he describes. Once again he paints the Berliners in their gray cafes and their blues, but this time he goes for the sunglasses-at-night crowd, the denizens of sleepless nights. Ludwig, an assistant director who quits an unfulfilling job and an affair at the same time, reaches a state of crisis that prohibits sleep. Abandoning himself to a rosy state of intoxication, he meets a gallery of characters, united by their on-again/off-again relationship to life. "Gisler draws the image of an entire class of young Berlinese, all of them drifting aimlessly. They try unsuccessfully to establish deeper emotional commitments, and all of them fail, precisely because they do not know exactly what they need and how they are prepared to invest themselves in order to obtain it. Gisler looks at them all with a sympathetic eye (and) gives an accurate portrait of their confusion..." (Variety).