GERMAN ANGST (2015)

 

(Directors: Jörg Buttgereit, Michal Kosakowski and Andreas Marschall. Screenwriters: Jörg Buttgereit [“Final Girl”], Goran Mimica [“Make a Wish”] and Andreas Marschall [“Alraune”].)

Review

This tripartite anthology features “love, sex and death”-themed segments, all of which take place in Berlin. There is no wraparound story in GERMAN, though each segment is separated by footage of Berlin architecture and closeups of the city’s fountains.  

 

Jörg Buttgereit’s sly, melancholic “Final Girl” features extreme close ups, odd camera angles, blurry-image mirrors, and home film footage. Its suburban-set story concerns a teen girl (with a proclivity for cutting), her beloved guinea pigs and a blindfolded, gagged man tied to a bed. Girl (as her character is called) obsesses on guinea pig behavior and the man’s gory pain via household instruments. Buttgereit provides enough visual and dialogue clues to provide the (possible) backstory leading up to the current situation, with a finish that is suitably abrupt and striking (credit editor Michal Kosakowski for that─Kosakowski also edited his directorial segment, “Alraune”). “Final” put me in the mindset of the 1976 American film THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LIVES DOWN THE LANE.

Lola Gave played “Girl.” Axel Holst played “Father.”

 

“Make A Wish,” initially light and romantic, turns malicious and violent after a deaf and dumb couple (Jacek and Kasia) explore an abandoned industrial building where they’re interrupted by racist punks. The couple’s situation parallels something that happened in a Polish village in “late summer 1943” when Jacek’s grandmother, along with her fellow villagers, were rounded up by Nazi tormentors─and, like those long-ago soldiers, the punks don’t know about a two-figured necklace their intended victims have in their possession.

“Wish”’s story is interesting, the camera work is fluid and constantly moving (Kosakowski lacks Buttgereit’s propensity for artsy closeups), and its tones─visual and otherwise─is grimy, contrasting well with “Final”’s almost antiseptic cleanliness. (Credit cinematographer Sven Jakob-Engelmann, who worked on all three segments.) Unfortunately, “Wish” runs long in the middle, though its ending, like “Final”’s, is sharp and satisfying.

Among “Wish“’s standout players: Matthan Harris (FOR WE ARE MANY, 2019) played Jacek; Annika Strauss, Kasia.

Andreas Marschall’s “Alraune” centers around a successful bottle photographer (Eden) who tells his girlfriend (Maya), via flashback, about a mysterious dark-haired seductress (Kira Kutyneko) who inadvertently introduces him to a secret “members only” sex club (Opius), where the powerful Petrus (with his menacing charm and curious empathy) holds sway. There, Eden’s carnal encounters with Kira take on a further, supernatural edge, one that hooks the pushy photographer─he’s blindfolded and told not to lift it under any circumstances (lending a fairy tale-esque morality to “Alraune”). Then, of course, he lifts it, unleashing a nightmare existence.

This is my favorite of the three segments, one that beguiles (with its brief bursts of extremity, humor, rich color, intuitive closeups and effective editing)─a great minifilm with some gory, nasty elements coming to the forefront near its finish.

Milton Welsh, who provided voicework in “Wish,” played Eden. Désirée Giorgetti (ZOMBIE MASSACRE 2: REICH OF THE DEAD, 2015) played Maya. Kristina Kostiv (the upcoming THE CORPSE GRINDERS) played Kira. Rüdiger Kuhlbrodt, with his striking features, played Petrus.

 

GERMAN is a good, memorable film (even with “Wish”’s brief lag-time), one of the better compendium gore-and-shock films I’ve seen in a long time, its execution enhanced by Fabio Amurri’s subtle and effectively mood-fluidic compositions.