I’m Not Wearing Prada

Friday, February 10, 9:30 pm. On its second day, the 57th Berlinale Film Festival is in full swing. The stars are striding up the red carpet at the swanky Berlinale Palast at Potsdamer Platz, the place to be. Here in this plush cinema the competition category films will be premiered and judged by an impressive, star-studded jury.

Either connected or uncool

In the somewhat less glamorous setting of my new second home, the gym, I watch these scenes unfolding on the TV whilst pounding away on the treadmill. My friend Claudia, who is cycling furiously on the neighboring machine, breathlessly tells me about how she has managed to get her hands on some rare tickets to the opening of Korean director Park Chan-wook’s new film "I’m a Cyborg, But That's OK.” Happy for her (albeit slightly envious), I wish her a nice evening and set off home, plotting how I could get my hands on some tickets. There are two ways to do this, seemingly:

1) Be "connected," i.e. know and be prepared to beg someone who works at the festival and might have a few spare tickets. (Although I’m sure that, as well as a surplus of tickets, they probably also have a surplus of friends from Feb. 8 to 18 every year).

2) Or, alternatively, the "uncool" way, which is to stand in line at the box office with the common people and see what isn’t sold out by the time you get to the front of the queue. This, however, can have dangerous consequences. The combination of a), disappointment at finding all the films you wanted to see are sold out and b), not wanting to go home empty handed after having waited in the queue for two hours can lead to ending up with tickets for films you weren’t really planning on watching, for example one about a pubescent girl with a vagina dentata (don’t ask).

Last minute luck

Luckily for me, on this occasion I am saved from either of the above, as halfway home I get a phone call which changes the course of my evening dramatically. A friend who, unbeknownst to me, is working at the festival (he had kept that one quiet!) has a spare ticket for the premiere of “I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK,” which is starting in 20 minutes and do I want to come?

I hesitate for a moment, as I’m not exactly dressed to kill in my jog bottoms and scruffy trainers, not to mention the fact that I am carrying a Lidl's plastic shopping bag full of sweaty gym clothes. (Not too classy I know, but the leech effect of the gym membership on my wallet has prevented me from shopping elsewhere.)

However, it would be a crime to turn down a ticket to a film premiere, so I jump in a taxi stopped at some traffic lights and tell the driver to "take me to the Berlinale Palast!" This feels quite satisfying, although I think I spot a disparaging glance at my plastic bag. I race (at least trainers are better for running up the red carpet) past the crowds of screaming Korean girls and equally non-plussed Germans outside the cinema, find my friend, and we take our seats just as the host comes on stage to introduce the film.

A happy end

It’s a good film, a surreal but refreshing love story between a schizophrenic girl who thinks she is a cyborg and a boy who thinks he can steal souls, set in a Korean psychiatric hospital. The atmosphere in the cinema is exhilarating, and when the actors come on stage at the end, the Korean fan base in the front row goes wild.

And the good thing about not wearing Prada, (or is it the Lidl’s logo clashing with the red velvet of the Berlinale Palast?), is that a surprised Claudia instantly spots me amongst a sea of elegantly dressed people and we all get to go for a drink and discuss the film afterwards.