Schwarze Schafe (Oliver Rihs, 2006)

At its best, the portmanteau or anthology film can be a real feast, a table overflowing with the tapas of life's rich tapestry where parallel and often almost wholly unconnected storylines with disparate characters meld into a multicoloured whole rather than just crowding each other out. Pulp Fiction, Amores Perros and Short Cuts are solid modern examples of the format.
And then there are those works where the format is chosen because deep down the filmmaker knows that no single one of their strands is strong enough to sustain a whole film. Black Sheep is one of these sorry derivatives. Berlin as a setting is a marvellous font of eclecticism, so Rihs gives us a wide panoply of stereotypes united by their obnoxiousness, from horny Turkish lads, limp-wristed queens and drunken loafers to pitiful satanists. Then he gives himself a get-out clause by calling them all losers. There's little to connect with, bar a few occasions for smirks, and it's quite undeserving of the patina that its crisp and imaginative cinematography lends it.

3/10