Obsession (4 Stars)

I'd already seen this film in April as the opening film of the Stuttgart Nights Festival. I didn't intend to see it again, but one of my friends praised it so highly that I needed to go back and check if my four star rating is high enough. After careful consideration, I'm leaving my rating unchanged.

The film is about a shy boy called Bear who doesn't have the courage to approach a woman called Nikki that he's had a crush on for years. Honestly, he's so insecure that I feel like slapping him. But this isn't a fault that I find with the film. The world is full of insecure young men who're afraid to approach women.

Bear uses a mystical artefact called a One Wish Willow. After breaking it he can make a wish. His wish is for Nikki to love him more than anyone else in the world. Even when she comes on to him, Bear backs away, but she won't take No for an answer. We soon see that her love for Bear isn't healthy; it's an obsession. To take just one example, she refuses to let him talk to other women.

What disturbs me about the film is that Nikki does other strange things that have nothing to do with her obsessive love for Bear. For instance, she cooks his dead cat for him. That's just silly. If things like this had been omitted from the film I could have given it a five star rating.