With no real options for work in his remote village, teenager Franz (Simon Morzé) is sent off to Vienna by his mother, to work for Otto Trsnjek (Johannes Krisch) in his tobacconist shop. The youngster sets about learning the business, and getting to know the customers. Prominent among them is Herr Professor Sigmund Freud (Bruno Ganz) who takes an interest in Franz. The boy falls in love with the flighty and knowing Anezka (Emma Drogunova), but when the girl keeps vanishing from his life it's the eminent professor he turns to for advice.
This simple coming of age tale is enriched by the political background, for this is 1937 and there is a rising movement in Austria sympathetic to the Nazis, wanting the country to become a part of a Greater Germany. Trsnjek is vehemently opposed, and continues to serve his customers, be they communists or Jews (like Freud) in the face of threats and intimidation. When the Anschluss takes place in March 1938, and the Gestapo are suddenly in the city, Franz is forced to take sides and the psychiatrist has a big decision to make.
The movie's biggest failing is it's obsession with symbolism, a tiresome means to link it to Freud himself. Ganz is a big compensation though, a still, considered centre of a violently changing society. And the contemporary resonance, especially the licence for bigotry given to ordinary people by the prevailing ideology, is depressingly relevant in a UK fearfully obsessed with "foreigners".
Weaknesses notwithstanding this movie is a powerful reminder of the disturbing ease with which fascism insinuates itself and the parallels with our own times.
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