I often think of Hawaii

This experimental documentary portrays a working-class family in Berlin: 16-year-old Carmen lives with her single mother and her brother Tito in a terraced house on the outskirts of Berlin. Her father, an American soldier from Puerto Rico, abandoned her mother and the children. Early in the morning, her mother leaves the house to go cleaning; kneeling, she scrubs the seemingly endless corridors, her hand reaching repeatedly into the bright yellow plastic bucket. Carmen cleans too, her movements almost frozen – her voice from off-screen sounds sluggish. She finds her mother’s work monotonous. These oppressive circumstances are subverted not by action, but by the power of the imagination: monotony and everyday life are intertwined with bombastic music, dazzling costumes and melodramatic poems – an escapist protest against the uniformity of daily routines. A film that takes the family’s dreams seriously and frames their faces in such a way that they radiate sensuality. (df)