by MARK SLUTSKY

Three young, attractive and not particularly happy couples get down to tacks and grapple with their various issues in Naked (Nackt), a new film by German director Doris Dorrie (best known for her '80s hit comedy Men). Based on Dorrie's play Happy, Naked is stylized and stagey, and its many long, talky scenes betray the film's theatrical roots. It's a colourful and attractive movie to look at, though somewhat in the manner of an IKEA ad.

Unsurprisingly, Naked is structured like a play. The film begins with a scene to introduce each couple, then sticks them all together for the middle, ending with three more scenes to conclude each couple's story. First we meet Emilia (Heike Makatsch) and Felix (Benno Fürmann), who have just broken up and are finding it hard to deal with. Then we're introduced to Annette (Alexandra Maria Lara) and Boris (Jurgen Vogel), just married and coping with bourgeois life. Finally, there's Dylan (Mehmet Kurtulus) and Charlotte (Nina Hoss), who've just struck it rich on the stock market. Kurtulus and Hoss are hosting a dinner party for the other two couples, old friends of theirs. As these things tend to go in movies and plays, the dinner party turns into a convenient way to lay bare their problems with each other and get to all that juicy dramatic stuff.

Which is fine, but it's a little difficult to care about these characters, who never really show themselves as more than well-dressed and not particularly interesting nor attractive people. The movie's heavy stylization (and consistently annoying soundtrack) make it difficult to keep one's interest at all, even when the actors do start taking off their clothes and making bold pronouncements about intimacy.

Naked is showing as part of Made in Bavaria, a weeklong "cultural and economic event," as they're putting it. Other films showing in the series include Caroline Link's Oscar-winning Nowhere in Africa and Peter Sehr's Love the Hard Way, which features Adrien Brody and Pam Grier, along with four other features.

Naked screens Friday, May 16, at 7pm at the Musée des beaux-arts. For showtimes see repertory listings or go to www.goethe.de/montreal

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