Few periods in recent history brought such monumental change to its citizens in such a short time as the months following October 1989 in Germany. This bittersweet story about a son’s loving effort to shelter his mother from painful realities envelops the social and economic transformations that occurred as the Berlin Wall came down and western culture flooded in. The subsequent re-unification of East and West Germany one year later furnishes the bookend for this quirky, what-if, dramatic comedy. The struggle to hold on to what is important and stay afloat in times of change, is brought delightfully to life in the story about Alex (Daniel Bruhl), whose loyal socialist mother suffers a heart attack and falls into a coma on the eve of the fall of the wall. She wakes up eight months later to find that – nothing has changed.

In fact, there is very little left of the world she left behind, but warned by the doctor that her fragile heart will not withstand any shock, Alex attempts to cover signs of the enormous change while she convalesces at home. With the reluctant help of his sister, Ariane (Maria Simon), he maintains the illusion that all is well and as she left it. Mother (Katrin Sass) became a model socialist citizen after Alex’s father defected to the west ten years earlier. Now, her children must drag out the crumbling furniture and ugly utilitarian clothes they wore during the wall era and prop up the illusion with visits from friends willing to do the same. The fiction takes on a life of its own and things spiral out of Alex’ control. The peskiest intrusive image that Alex can’t keep out is the iconic Coca-Cola logo.

Sass, as Alex’ mother Christiane, delivers a finely tuned performance and achieves the credibility that shoulders the film. As a woman left alone east of the wall after her husband fails to return from a trip when Alex is 8 years old, she suffers a debilitating depression. Finally responding to the anguish of her children, she bounces back, embraces the cause, and throws herself into trying to help others by writing ineffective letters to the proper channels.

This fresh story of an alternate, fantasy vision of what might have been, had communism engulfed the west instead of the other way around, is an appealing, if an optimistically ludicrous one. This film has been a huge hit in Europe and one speculates that the humor of the concept and such surreal images as Lenin’s truncated body floating by plays even more forcefully there. Nonetheless, the heart of the film is a sweet role reversal of the protectiveness of a child for his mother.