One might think that, in times when the EU is drifting apart politically, its people would also have contrasting worries. Europe, She Loves interweaves the stories of four couples on the edge of Europe: Siobhan and Terry in Dublin want to live without drugs; in Tallinn, Veronika wants Harri to get on better with her son Artur; Penny wants to leave Thessaloniki and the older Niko to work in Italy, and newly enamored Juan and Caro in Seville barely think about the future. Their everyday lives are full of similar problems and their relationships are an escape from the social and economic woes of their countries. Excessive parties and drug-taking are all par for the course and the protagonists have no qualms about allowing the camera to observe intimate moments right up to the point of sex.
Europe, she loves is an intimate portrait of four parings all over Europe. The European aspect only gets shown in various audio clips and like a time capsule, shows some desparation in the poorer countries Europe has to offer (Estonia, Greece, Spain and Ireland). The main personas are smoking all the time and don't even get much pleasure from doing drugs. As did I from watch this documentary. It is beautifully shot, but it goes from uninteresting discussion to uninteresting discussion, dispersed by some enviromental scenes shot from a car. The music, with some exceptions, stays ambient or is gone. Some scenes are definitely staged, while I believe that some scenes are not.
As I read from an interview, the film team had 10 days at every location. Maybe the movie ahould habe been shorter. It is a cool time capsule, maybe, but I have more fun watching a reality docu such as "Armes Deutschland" where the people seem more relatable and more interesting things happen.