Dir: Elmer Imanov | Germany Drama 2025 122’
Elmer Imanov is an accomplished writer, director and producer who hails from, Baku, Azerbiijan. Now working in Cologne, he co-founded a production company Color of May with Eva Blondiau. Imanov’s graduation film The Swing of the Coffin Maker won multiple awards and was followed by End of Season (2019) which took the FIPRESCI prize at Rotterdam that year. A Room of My Own, which he produced, followed in 2022. The Kiss of the Grasshopper is his first full feature as a writer/director.
They’re something sad about a middle-aged man who’s still trying to find himself in an existential crisis. But that’s the case for Bernard in this chilly high-tech sci-fi thriller, described as a ‘magic-realist exploration of loss and grief’ screening in this year’s Berlinale.
Living in a stark apartment in Cologne with a pet sheep and his off/on girlfriend Agatha (who keeps threatening to leave him), Bernard has a penchant for wearing mallard green, and holding his breath underwater. He is also begrudgingly looking after his father Carlos, the most relatable of these three main characters. Carlos, it soon emerges. is suffering from an inoperable brain tumour which causes Bernard more introspective navel gazing and he explores his uncertain future.
Twenty five minutes into the running time and the actual plot remains unclear, the film plods torpidly towards Carlos’ impending death amid various hospital visits. Bernard drifts through his days and hardly ever says anything but looks permanently miserable as he goes about an aimless existence until a life-changing encounter with a grasshopper in a lift.
With lush cinematography from Borri Kehl and an unsettling soundscape, The Kiss of the Grasshopper is visually immaculate but devoid of a compelling narrative, playing out in a series of vaguely connected episodes in the life of this dour and depressing threesome. Carlos’ demise seems to offer Bernhard some kind of release and an final epiphany that propels him towards the future in a bizarre but spectacular finale that’s certainly worth waiting for despite the uncertainly that went before. @MeredithTaylor
BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 13-23 FEBRUARY | FORUM 2025