“A very promising debut from a talented storyteller.”

Lukas (Florian Geißelmann) is a bit of an outsider at school, although he gets on fine with the cool clique. That cannot be said for his best friend Andi (Anton Petzold), a lumbering, somewhat overweight boy who has transferred from another school. Their favorite pastime is going into the woods and shooting each other with paintball guns; anybody who has ever engaged in this activity knows that while ostensibly it’s just a splat of paint, a solid hit will leave a sore mark. None of it hurts as bad as the effects of bullying though. When a video gets out of Andi threatening to kill some of his classmates to their faces, teachers and parents are understandably worried. What they don’t know is what led to Andi’s outburst: him being brutally bullied, the evidence of which is shown early in the film. As the pressure at school mounts, Lukas and Andi retreat into the woods more often, together with Lukas’ friend Maja (Mathilda Smidt), the glue that holds this threesome together. As their bond strengthens and their physical intimacy intensifies, triggered by the bruises left behind by paint gun pellets, so does the possibility of violence.

Over the past few decades, with the advent of social media and mobile phones with cameras, bullying has become a more visible problem in society, something that is starting to be reflected in cinema; just this year we had Kohei Kadowaki’s We Are Aliens premiering in Cannes, and Jan-Eric Mack’s A Happy Family in Karlovy Vary. German director Jannis Lenz’s debut feature Oasis can now be added to that list. With a deft hand Lenz leads his audience through this story of making connections, deliberately suggesting it might end up in a school shooting to keep the suspense afloat. He creates tension among the three central characters without their relationship getting sexual, another strand that keeps you guessing until the end. The risk here is the audience building an ending in their heads that doesn’t get satisfied, but Lenz is half successful in avoiding that.

The ‘failure’, if we can call it that, is Lenz leaving the connection among the three teenagers unresolved. After a final confrontation in the woods with some of Andi’s bullies, the trio dissolves, but while Lukas and Andi get a proper ending after that, Maja quietly disappears from the film. A shame, because the relationship among these three is the most interesting dynamic in the film. Slowly developing their physical intimacy, as Maja seems intent on having the boys also interact with each other in that way, makes for an intriguing angle to their friendship because of how comfortable they are with each other’s increasingly naked bodies while any sexual interest is only hinted at but never made explicit.

The film fares better in resolving the situation around Andi and his problems at school, although it is an ending that will be difficult to swallow for those who have developed a soft spot for the boy (which is likely most of the audience). Lenz’s build-up to the violent outburst that does Andi in is cleverly executed, but it’s mostly Petzold’s acting that seals the deal. He and Smidt give the most interesting performances in the film by virtue of their characters being the most intriguing, while Geißelmann, as the protagonist, has a reactive role with less of an edge. His most dramatic work comes in the interactions with his dad, played by Godehard Giese, who tries to build a relationship with his son after his wife (and Lukas’ mother) has recently passed away. Their plotline follows a more traditional path, complicated by the fact that Lukas’ dad is also his teacher.

Lenz’s direction is focused on long takes in the dramatically important moments, and with a good eye for composition, in particular in the forest scenes. The screenplay, co-written with Alexander Dirninger, leaves plenty of space for interpretation, which helps the audience get through a runtime that should be too long for this story, but never drags the film down. It feels like Lenz is still trying to find his voice, mixing strong moments like the opening scenes with more pedestrian work in other parts of the film (most notably the school meetings over Andi’s situation), but Oasis is a very promising debut from a talented storyteller.