ANOTHER barrier comes tumbling down, as that old chestnut about the Germans never making a funny comedy has to be consigned to the history book.

The year is 1989, and the Berlin Wall is about to fall when dedicated Communist mother Christiane (Katrin Sass) falls into a deep coma.

By the time she awakes, eight months later, the Wall has gone, and nothing in East Berlin will be the same again. Except it must be for Christiane, because her health is so fragile that her son Alex (Daniel Bruhl) has been told the shock could be fatal.

The only solution, he decides, is to make time stand still, a mercy mission that will involve convincing his mother that Communism is triumphing over evil Western capitalism. Cue a hasty return to East German clothes, pickles in jars and a sky blue Trabant as the ultimate dream car.

Wolfgang Becker's comedy - the most successful German film of all time - is built on one of the stage and screen's favourite comic devices, the struggle to maintain a doomed charade. If it worked for Oscar Wilde in The Importance Of Being Earnest, then it certainly works here too, as Alex has to recourse to ever more elaborate, urgent schemes to keep the truth from his mother in the face of her seeing Western clothes, Coke adverts and a disappearing bust of Lenin.

Amid the old-fashioned farce, there is an emotional catharsis and political nous that makes Good Bye, Lenin! so enjoyable, touching and positive.

Updated: 09:30 Friday, August 08, 2003