SPOILERS!
This is a very sparse film as far as dialogue and plot development goes. It's very rich in imagery, and the images are indeed beautiful. I mean that one has to pay attention when one watches this, because it might seem a slow movie, with the abundance of shots of the German coast, and snails and skies, but the story develops at a brisk pace in the beginning. It's all highly implicit, the passage of time is indicated by characters being played by different actors, but especially in the case of the boy Tommie, they look sometimes so similar, it's really hard to tell.
Remarkable about this movie is the start, there's very little dialogue, it's just a recording of kids lounging about or sitting and staring into space. There's a lot of that. I guess the director found his inner Sergio Leone and liked the famous opening of "C'era una volta il West (1968)" ...a lot. Here, the filmmakers are exaggerating the adage that you shouldn't tell too much, because only later I've learned that this part of the movie, when the main protagonists are kids, is supposed to be a whole summer, and not just a few days, as I initially thought. Very careful handling of the nudity as well. They'll get burned for it anyways, but it's craftily not showing any nudity.
Whether what Rebecca (Eva Green) does is actual incest is kind of debatable. What's noticeable is that she let's him call her mother, and mom, and he does so a lot. Perhaps to underline the impossibility of it all. At the end, Thomas calls her explicitly Rebecca and not Mother, to indicate the changed relationship.
There's also some irony to let the black mother, the obese mother and the elderly mother display such prejudice towards the 'copies', because it's these groups especially who have suffered from immense prejudices themselves, but apparently they aren't afraid to do it to others.
I think it's always risky to take a comedian and let him play a serious drama role, especially when he has the same facial ticks that he has as Dr. Who. Here and there I've read that the director didn't really know what Dr. Who was, or that Matt played him.
The acting performances are quality all around, and it's nice to see a vibrant Hannah Murray. I hadn't seen her since season 1 of Skins and it's always uncertain how child actresses turn out at a later age. She looks younger than her 21 years and is a very decent actress, I'm curious to see what she would do with a more challenging role.
The Melancholic Alcoholic.