Some long-established film festivals, such as Cannes and Venice, can legitimately claim to be timeless. Berlin, however, seems to be stuck in the past, and not only because the event somewhat coasts on its bygone reputation as a festival of discovery. It's also because, amid the corporate monumentalist architecture of Potsdamer Platz, the atmosphere seems frozen in the mid-1990s. The Berlinale's synth-heavy trip-hop anthem plays before every film, accompanying the CGI fireworks of the festival trailer, and as you emerge from the Palast, the first thing you see is the billboard for the long-running show by hoary postmodernist novelty act Blue Man Group.
The Berlinale's 64th edition was the most lukewarm in years. You don't usually expect swoons and scandals here, but you do hope that every year's competition will bring one major discovery, or at least an unassuming gem that everyone falls in love with. There was one universally adored film in competition – but it doesn't quite count as a Berlin revelation, as it came straight from wowing Sundance. That was Boyhood by Richard Linklater, following a Texan childhood over 10 years, a warm, expansive saga that at the time of going to press was this year's frontrunner for top award the Golden Bear.
Berlin always provides its share of A-list red-carpet promenades – this year, by the likes of George Clooney, Bill Murray and Uma Thurman – yet these never quite disguise the festival's essential earnestness. However, among the muted solemnity of most of the competition selection, there were some things to get excited about. One was opening film The Grand Budapest Hotel, in which director Wes Anderson pushed his hyper-meticulous brand of baroque into grotesque and fanciful new realms. Set in an imaginary middle Europe between the wars, the film recounts the picaresque exploits of hotel concierge Monsieur Gustave (a dashing, dandyish Ralph Fiennes). Told as a narrative within a reminiscence within a novel, this opulent entertainment felt like a puppet show with human marionettes, or like an aesthete's production of a Feydeau farce – with added ski chases.
Another competition thrill was '71, the debut feature by British director Yann Demange. Scripted by Black Watch playwright Gregory Burke, this is a Northern Ireland drama set at the height of the Troubles, with Jack O'Connell as a squaddie who finds himself stranded alone on the wrong side of the Falls Road. An atmospheric, nocturnal nail-biter, '71 has the toughness and tension of a top-quality B-movie (shades of John Carpenter and Walter Hill). And, although he has very little dialogue throughout this laconic drama, the film sparked much excitement about young lead O'Connell as a man to watch.
Everyone hoped for bonus outrage from the full-length Volume 1 of Lars von Trier's sex drama Nymphomaniac, 28 minutes longer than the version due to be released in the UK late this week. No such luck. There were some PR shenanigans around the screening: Von Trier kept his council, but wore a "Persona Non Grata" T-shirt in response to his banning from Cannes, while Shia LaBeouf wore a paper bag on his head on the red carpet (these days, everyone's a performance artist). As for the film itself, no one knew what to expect – incest, orgying nuns, the heroine copping off with the inmates of Copenhagen Zoo? No, all you got in the extended cut was a little more genitalia and a lot more dialogue, including further speeches about ash trees and a lacklustre Proust joke.
Besides Von Trier, another cultural shock jock clowning around was French novelist Michel Houellebecq. He played himself in The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq, a downbeat comedy purporting to explain the writer's brief disappearance in 2011. In director Guillaume Nicloux's version of events, Houellebecq is abducted by a trio of gormless heavies and proves a total nightmare, cadging endless fags and arguing with them about Tolkien, HP Lovecraft and Belgian politics. The least glamorous cult figure of our age – he resembles a pickled gnome in a supermarket anorak – Houellebecq turns out to be a good sport and a fine deadpan comic. Imagine a seedier Curb Your Enthusiasm sponsored by Gauloises, and you get a sense of what fun this was.
And there was yet another cult figure with a dark literary bent – rock's erudite Man in Black, Nick Cave. Directed by British artists Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, 20,000 Days on Earth was technically a documentary portrait of the singer, but neither felt nor looked like your average doc. Shot in moody widescreen, the film followed Cave through a supposedly typical day in Brighton – taking in chats in the car with Ray Winstone and Kylie Minogue, and a revealing confessional with psychoanalyst Darian Leader. Cave opens up wittily, candidly and with some philosophical clout about writing, performing and his marriage. There aren't that many songs, but when they come, they're all the more powerful for having heard his musings.
Among the few competition titles to stir debate was the German film Kreuzweg (Stations of the Cross), by Dietrich Brüggemann, about religious fanaticism, which polarised critics. I wish I could tell you more, but the one unshakable rule about festivals is that the most unpromising-sounding competition film will end up being the one you kick yourself for missing. I seemed to be in a minority for admiring the overextended but compelling Greek thriller Stratos, about a taciturn hitman who proves to be the last bastion of decency in a world of cynicism and corruption. The film is a steely response to Greece's financial collapse – and is directed by the appropriately named Yannis Economides.
Otherwise, I suspect that Berlin 2014 will be best remembered for its major innovation – the addition of a pop-up line of gourmet food wagons. Festival-goers will turn up undeterred again next year – but many of them will be doing it less for the films than for this Berlinale's real discovery, the pulled pork baps.
