It’s possible to make mundane workplace comedies enjoyable. The Office gave us one of modern television’s most compelling romances and Office Space is still as quotable today as it was 20 years ago. The new German film, In the Aisles, directed and co-written by Thomas Stuber, has some of the absurdity that made those workplace comedies work. There are scenes of forklifts weaving through the aisles of a Costco-esque warehouse and the workers are constantly gossiping and feuding. Unfortunately, what the film lacks are characters that make us care about these petty dramas.
Our entry point into the world is Christian (Franz Rogowski), a heavily tattooed, strong, silent type who seems to be leaving a rougher life behind for more stability. Placed in the beverages department with the much older Bruno (Peter Kurth), he soon develops an obsession with a woman in the sweets department, Marion (Sandra Hüller). As Christian slowly settles into the work and learns to operate the forklift on his own, he and Marion gradually grow closer—despite the fact that she’s already married. It’s a set up ripe for drama, but the film is far more concerned–and far better–at embedding the audience in the everyday workings of the store.
Christian and his coworkers work the night shift and the quiet intimacy of the near-empty store gives the work scenes a somewhat otherworldly quality. The classical music that plays as the forklifts dance through the aisles isn’t just a stylistic choice, it’s playing over the store speakers as one of the workers plays DJ each night. That slightly off quality also extends to some of the scenes where Stuber and co-writer Clemens Meyer lean into the absurdity of what Christian and the other workers do each day. Though watching Christian struggle to operate the forklift earns a few laughs, perhaps the most memorable moment comes when he sits through a workplace safety video during a training class.
Over Christian’s shoulder, we watch as one actor after another is maimed or even sliced in half by machinery gone wrong. It’s a funny scene, but part of what makes it so memorable is how tonally distinct it is from the rest of the film. Indeed, many of Aisles’s problems spring from the moments when that absurdity feels at odds with the otherwise subdued and realistic tone. There’s the fact that there only seem to be women in the sweets department and that Marion’s name tag literally says, “Sweet Goods.” There’s the scene where Marion and Christian flirt in the break room and whenever the camera is pointed at Marion and the fake tropical background on the wall behind her, the audience and presumably Christian hear waves crashing.
While each choice is meant to break up the film’s brutally slow pacing, it can only help so much when the story itself is so listless and uneventful. Other than the love story between Christian and Marion, the only real plotline with any meat on it is whether Christian will learn to drive the forklift. We see Christian clam up when some equally tattooed old friends see him in the store and he tells Marion about punching a boss at a previous job, but we otherwise learn nothing about why he wants to leave his life of petty larceny or how long he was in juvenile detention. Stuber and Meyer seem to gesture toward giving the largely-mute Christian interiority through the occasional voice over, but they don’t typically tell us anything that isn’t already clear onscreen and what’s said is so oblique that the almost literary tone doesn’t fit the character.
That would perhaps be forgivable if the love story were more concrete, but it feels like an afterthought throughout. Christian doesn’t learn of Marion’s marriage until well into their flirtation and not only does he hear it from a secondary character, but the pair never talk about their relationship in the context of her marriage. Hüller and Rogowski have chemistry, but it’s hard to invest in the characters’ relationship when the script never seems like it’s going anywhere. Just as egregious is a late-film character death that, while poignant because we’ve spent so much time with the character, doesn’t feel earned because the dialogue never suggests that person is as bad off as they actually are.
In the Aisles should be better than it is. It’s a well-made film with two compelling leads whose chemistry should make us invest in their story. Unfortunately, the script doesn’t seem terribly interested in its characters, instead focusing on the repetitive tasks that the workers do each day. There’s certainly a point to be made about the way relationships can blossom in even the most pedestrian circumstances, but Stuber’s film simply doesn’t know how.
