Caroline Wahl's bestseller "22 Lanes" has been made into a film. Is it worth seeing? Yes, if you can stand the kitsch.

This late summer belongs to Caroline Wahl. She's 30 years old, and her third novel, "The Assistant," was published a few days ago. She's already working on her fourth. That's Wahl's pace.

Caroline Wahl writes bestsellers in straightforward and bold language. She has fans who eagerly await new reading material from her. And the arts pages are also becoming increasingly curious. In recent weeks, Wahl's face has appeared in all major German-language newspapers.

In the hype surrounding the new book, the film adaptation of her first novel, "22 Lanes," has been almost forgotten. Yet it's also an event, at least for the fans. The novel on which the film is based was published two years ago. Since then, it's been on the bestseller lists. It has sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Does the story work in the cinema?

"22 Lanes" is about the lives of two sisters in a small German town. Tilda is the older one, a gifted math student who works at a supermarket and swims laps at the outdoor pool in her free time. Her younger sister, Ida, prefers to stay home and draw. She is shy. She only goes to the pool when it's raining. She avoids people whenever possible anyway.

Tilda and Ida's mother is an alcoholic. She sometimes works in a library, but mostly she drinks. She's barely there for her two daughters, and even worse, she repeatedly becomes violent. So it's Tilda who takes care of her younger sister, accompanies her to school, and cooks for her.

Tilda is played by Swiss actress Luna Wedler, known from the film "Traitor" and the Netflix series "Biohackers." She aptly conveys Tilda's emotional states with gestures, facial expressions, and language. You can see how she seethes when her mother once again deceives her daughters into believing she's done with alcohol. Eleven-year-old Zoë Baier stars alongside her as Ida. Baier also stars in Mascha Schilinski's film "Looking into the Sun," which Germany submitted to the Oscars. Perhaps this is the beginning of a great acting career.

The film thrives on short, memorable scenes, objects, and places that shed light on the reality of these women's lives. For example, there's the jute bag from the library that hangs on the kitchen door and overflows with empty bottles almost every evening. It means the mother has been drinking again.

Then the radishes. Younger sister Ida cuts them into florets for dinner with her mother and sister. The idea is that the shared meal creates the impression, at least briefly, that they are an intact family. But it usually only lasts a deceptively quiet quarter of an hour before her mother loses her temper again.

And, of course, the outdoor pool. In the rain. Blue, empty, and a little sad. That's where the film begins, and it returns there countless times. The outdoor pool is the two sisters' retreat. They swim and then run home together through the rain. Small towns can be so romantic.

But it's also oppressively small, especially for Tilda. At university, Tilda's professor encourages her to apply for a position in Berlin. She could write her doctoral thesis there. Tilda is determined to do that. But her worries aren't about the application; they're about Ida. She doesn't know if she can leave her alone with her mother.

Sometimes the story is touching. For example, when Tilda pours the cheap pasta into a different container. Ida shouldn't know that they can't afford the more expensive pasta. Moreover, Tilda and Ida's world is full of motifs that trigger nostalgia in millennials; they remind them of their own childhood and youth. Tilda wears band shirts, Ida a T-shirt with a Diddl character. The sisters are reading "The Hunger Games," the American science fiction series by Suzanne Collins that was so popular in the 2010s. On the way to school, they sing "Durch den Monsun" by Tokio Hotel. You want to sing along.

But then Viktor bursts into the story, a young man who also swims at the outdoor pool. Tilda used to be friends with his little brother. But he died in a car accident that almost wiped out the entire family. Only Viktor is still alive. He returns to the small town to clear out his family's house.

Viktor and Tilda grow closer. Is it because Tilda knew Viktor's brother? Or do the two share a common bond through their shared experiences? Unfortunately, we never learn. Instead, Viktor and Tilda simply stare at each other from a distance. Their first encounters are superficial and clichéd. One evening, they're at the same bar. When Tilda leaves, Viktor runs after her. He asks her what she's thinking, drunk, wearing a short dress, and trying to walk home alone. It's a scene we recognize from so many romantic movies. Cheesy and a little boring. At one point, they kiss, on the roof of a skyscraper at sunset. He says, "I didn't see that coming." It's a bit flat.

The film stays very close to Caroline Wahl's novel, and the producers didn't unnecessarily distort the plot. But they also didn't take any risks. With Viktor and Tilda, the film fails to do better than the book: fewer predictable scenes, but more nuances of their meeting.

The novel "22 Lanes" is a perfect fit for a film adaptation. Caroline Wahl has created protagonists with distinct character traits. The clever math student as the protagonist. The shy little sister. The alcoholic mother. The gloomy life in the small town. The escape in the form of a doctoral position in Berlin. The unexpected admirer. All of this fits the big screen.

Yet the film still lacks something crucial: Caroline Wahl's cheeky, succinct language, which cuts through the kitsch, clichés, and sadness. It only appears occasionally, in the form of Tilda's thoughts. Then sentences like, "Actually, actually, is a shitty word." You feel a brief sense of relief.

In the cinema.