A slight, tonally uneven German comedy-drama, Hermine Huntgeburth's The Trio cross-pollinates an omnisexual love triangle, a low-brow bedroom farce, and a road movie into a peculiar mixture that's far less outrageous than it aspires to be. Set against the appealingly dingy backdrops of fly-by-night carnivals, colorless shopping malls, and other signposts of urban decay, The Trio stars German TV sensation Götz George as the bumbling leader of a team of small-time con artists. Packed into a cluttered RV, George and his partners, lover Christian Redl and daughter Jeanette Hain, travel from one crowded public area to another lifting wallets from unsuspecting patrons. When Redl is struck by a car, they hire hunky bisexual Felix Eitner to take his place, and both carry on illicit affairs with the stranger. An appealing cast takes this rickety vehicle further than it has any right to go, but Huntgeburth settles for a lot of cheap, played-out gags, never quite locating the underlying pathos in her story. Gritty and low-key, The Trio attempts a certain level of realism, but it often stretches credibility to its breaking point. Why would Eitner, a basically sympathetic character, willfully play such a destructive role between father and daughter? How can the group continue to survive as con artists when their only technique—feigning blindness and bumping into a victim while the others make off with his wallet—is only slightly less conspicuous than wearing placards bearing the word "THIEF" in giant black letters? The Trio spends so much energy trying to juggle wildly different tones and genres that it doesn't bother to make its most basic premises seem convincing.