It's hard to place this movie, because in my opinion, two principles are clashing here. On the one hand, there's what you learn in screen writing class: Protagonists should have an aim and a need. On the other, there's the reality of life on the streets, where one day is pretty much the same as the day before, small incidents excluded. This said, one probably has to accept the fact that the main character Hagen Trinker is pretty aimless for most of the movie, drifting passively along. One assumes that there must be a backstory, a life he's fled, a crisis he couldn't manage but by drinking, but we learn very little about it. Around the midpoint of the movie, his implicit need for love is brought out in the open when he is finally giving in to a teenage runaway's wish for sex. It is very touching to see how the mechanic movement turns into something more Trinker didn't expect, and how this gives him an aim for some time: Find the girl, who has been brought back to her parents. But at the end, he's drifting again - and we can only hope he'll be finally able to do something with his life. It's interesting that the supporting characters, on the contrast, have very clearly defined aims: Edgar wants to go to Acapulco with Liane, Tom wants to see Cambridge. One succeeds, one doesn't. In the end I have to admit that I admire the screenwriter's and director's courage to leave questions unanswered. Still, one would have liked to learn more about those people under the bridge (who were still moving and talking very much like dressed down actors, I'm afraid).
