There is grim sensuality about German cinema. Banal characters coexist on celluloid for us to take note and wonder how much worse their lives could get, and entertain, for a moment, the possibility that something extraordinary could happen to them. In Lola Rennt (Tom Tykwer; 1998) we are shown the lives of the gutless: a smug old woman pushing a stroller down a lonely corner,a homeless guy on the subway, and a young mug named Mani who is suddenly very, very hard up for cash. Such pathetic lives, all to become engulfed in the techno-thumping whir that Franka Potente brings with her. Berlin looks abandoned in Lola Rennt. Where are the people? Is it an element of German cinema to isolate characters and watch them as they writhe across the Potsdammer Platz?