Cinema's Naughtiest Germans, Part Two

  BIG GIRLS DON'T CRY (2002)

The best aspect of this strange tale of German gymnasium girls--torn apart by conflicting development rates-- are the two actresses, one of whom, Karoline Herfurth, looks a bit like Liv Ullman. She plays Steffi, the poutier of the pair, while the radiant and very German looking Anna Maria Muhe plays Kati, her more "normal" friend. Whenever the film is focused on either of their faces, it’s fascinating as they are natural actors who hide as much from the camera as they show, even if they don’t deliver the powerhouse performances of Oscar-minded Americanische jungen.

On one of the girls' nights out they wind up being picked up by two older men and brought over to an "grown ups" lounge. In Germany, kids can enter bars and drink without i.d.s (making this an interesting contrast with the forbidden, glamorized nature of drinking in typical American teen films) this environment is still seen as adulthood ground zero, full of sex, drugs, music and disillusionment. Among the disillusions is Steffi's discovery that her dad is sitting on a nearby couch, making out with a woman not her mom and--even worse--the woman is East German! Steffi and Kati key woman's car, track her down to a shitty East Berlin tenement, and then Steffi proceeds to trick the woman's teenage daughter (Josephine Domes) into auditioning at a modeling agency which specializes in adult videos, under the pretext that it’s a record company (knowing from personal embittered experience the owner is a sex predator). Mein Gott! Are Germans really so vindictive that they would want to send girls they don't even know to their death? Oh wait! Of course they are! Was eine unheimliche frage!

Meanwhile another cute blonde girl has disappeared and the whole city is up in arms. Only Steffi knows the truth, and she's too self-absorbed over her dad’s divorce to consider that the psycho killer who almost raped Kati and the East German could be behind it. It's as if city-wide manhunts ala Fritz Lang's M were something a teenager would barely notice. It really becomes Kati's movie at this point as she must stand up to Steffi, who by this point is snorting coke, sleeping around, and not going to class. Eventually it all boils down to suicide and self-cutting, but along the way there’s lots of music sung in English, and everyone there seems to be bilingual, so it’s heartening to think us Americanische would have no problem going to visit. B

 AIMEE AND JAGUAR (1999)

Based on a true story, this is a nice mix of period craftsmanship and forbidden love that makes most Holocaust-ish drama look like the mopey bourgeoisie glad-handing tripe it really is. There's more human warmth and joy in three minutes of screen time with this pair of star-crossed lesbians then in the whole goddamned three hours of THE READER (2008). Why am I even comparing? Perhaps because many are the films that mix Nazi vs. Jew persecution with forbidden love and sumptuous period decor and wartime lighting schemes, but few are the ones any good, and this one is great, and didn't even get consideration for best foreign film in 1999. It did get nominated for a Golden Globe, Oscar's sleeker more artistically comprehensible, less bourgeois cousin.

As Felice the Jewish lesbian "hiding in plain sight" as assistant editor of a Nazi newspaper in 1943, Maria Schrader is an absolute knock-out, a jovial gamin who'd be ideal as a cross-dressing Shakespeare heroine, ala Rosalind in AS YOU LIKE IT. We believe her dangerous good cheer because Schrader plays the role with a fearless recklessness that perfectly captures our hearts and the character... her decision to risk discovery in order to stay with her Aryan hausfrau lover Lilly (Julianne Kohler) is the most beautifully brave and foolish move since Winslet jumped off the lifeboat in TITANIC (1997). The love they have between them is hot enough that you understand why she makes this suicidal gesture. It's beautiful to be that swept away, like THELMA AND JULIET! Even more startling, the film seems true even as it's completely insane, and still covers all its thematic and narrative bases to leave you profoundly moved. Best of all, sullenly self-righteous books-on-tape artist Ralph Fiennes is nowhere to be found. A

ZENTROPA (AKA EUROPA, 1991)

An early Lars Von Trier gem, not quite a masterpiece, perhaps due to lack of star wattage, a killer performance from Ernst-Hugo Jaregard aside (Von Trier fans know him best as THE KINGDOM's  Dr. Helmer). Udo Kier is good as an ennui-ridden gay brother of femme fatale love interest Barbara Sukowa (LOLA) but a lot of time is spent watching dumbkopf American expatriate Kessler (Jean Marc-Barr) mess things up for his exasperated sleeper car conducting uncle. If you're a fan of trains you don't have to know why Kessler expressly requests the sleeper car. Damn is it sexy there, a giant box full of dreaming passengers, careening along through the Hamburg night. But Kessler is like that temp you hire only to have to spend so much time correcting his mistakes you may as well do it yourself. No doubt Von Trier wanted it this way. He considered this a masterpiece and gave the Cannes jury the finger when he didn't win the Palme d'Or.

Yeah, Von Trier is Danish, but the film's set in post-war Germany so it still counts! Best of all it's got a German message: if you're not fighting to the death for a cause, no matter how doomed, then you're asleep at the wheel and may as well drown. It starts as good philosophy until someone reminds us it's from Mein Kampf.  And the Germans love trains, punctuality and death in equal measure. Gott in Himmel! B+