Tom Tykwer's kinetic 1998 feature Run Lola Run (Lola Rennt) not only marked the auspicious arrival of an imaginative director and a talented leading lady (both of whom are yet to fulfil their potential), but also heralded a new wave of critical and commercial appraisal for modern German cinema. Public interest in the country's film-making legacy has been sparked in recent years, in the UK at least, by major NFT retrospectives of maverick Neu Welle directors Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Werner Herzog - the two legendary figures of '70s New German cinema, whose imposing shadow has hung over the nation in a manner similar to Ingmar Bergman's in Sweden.
However, just as the fledgling films of Lukas Moodysson (Show Me Love, Together) have raised the public profile of modern-day Swedish cinema, proving it to be funny, touching, and colourful (rather than gloomy, grey and hard work, as Bergman's work is generally considered), so a spate of recently released German films have proved that German cinema isn't all political, isn't necessarily 'difficult' or 'weird' and doesn't have to star Klaus Kinski.
UK festivals last year delivered diverse German highlights, such as the raucous teen comedy Sonnenallee (Sun Alley) and the poetic road movie L'Amour, L'Argent, L'Amour, while interest in homegrown cinema in Germany itself has been reborn by the staggering success of Michael Herbig's Western movie spoof Der Schuh Des Manitu. While the old masters continue to work (Herzog's latest, Unbesiegbar (Invincible), starring Tim Roth, is slated to appear here in 2002), there are plenty of talented new kids on the block, as this year's 4th German Film Festival, organised in part by London's Goethe Institut and held at the Curzon Soho, proved emphatically.
The week-long festival boasted 15 new features, a selection of short films and a brief retrospective strand. Such various offerings embraced music, comedy, high drama and documentary, delivering a number of welcome surprises, the biggest of which being the impression that - to paraphrase the title of one of the festival selections - women are currently very much on top in the nation's industry. Three of the new features were directed by female film-makers: Branwen Okpako's documentary Dreckfresser (Dirt For Dinner), the director's graduation film; Franziska Buch's Emil & Die Detektive (Emil And The Detectives), an energetic adaptation of Erich Kästner's popular children's story; and Esther Gronenborn's Alaska.de - Eine Liebesgeschrifte (Alaska.de - A Love Story), a youthful and atmospheric urban drama, shot in autumnal colours and set in an East Berlin suburb. Many of the films - Alaska.de in particular - also boasted both unusually strong female characters and gutsy, heartfelt performances from the actresses playing them.
Best of the fest were Christian Petzold's Die Innere Sicherheit (The State I Am In), which was screened earlier last year at Edinburgh, and Michael Klier's Heidi M, one of 12 features receiving a UK premiere at the festival. With its tale of two former terrorists bringing up a young girl on the lam, Petzold's film has been labelled a German Running On Empty by many critics. It has been nominated for a spate of awards in the last 12 months and boasts a fine central performance from its young star Julia Hummer, as an adolescent struggling to come of age and to come to
terms with the life her parents have created for her. The hugely affecting drama Heidi M, in which Hummer plays a minor role, is also notable for the powerhouse performance of its leading actress. As the titular heroine, Katrin Sass plays a single woman approaching 50 who runs a small store in Berlin and is forced to adapt to life on her own when her young daughter leaves the nest to travel to Australia. The film contains some imaginative camerawork from Klier (Out Of America), has an impressively realistic script from Karin Aström, and is well shot by Sophie Maintigneux, but it is principally Sass's performance for which it is recommended.
Other commendable turns came from Serpil Turhan, as a young woman of Turkish descent in Der Schöne Tage (A Fine Day), the concluding episode of Thomas Arslan's predominantly masculine Berlin trilogy, and Bibiana Beglau, as a former terrorist in Volker Schlöndorff's Die Stille Nach Dem Schuss (The Legends Of Rita), the director's finest film since 1979's Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum). Turhan, whose character Deniz is a voiceover artist, working as a dubbing speaker on Eric Rohmer's Conte d'été (itself an episode of another acclaimed set of films), gives a measured, almost stately performance in Der Schöne Tag. Arslan's film follows Deniz as she languidly wanders through the streets of Berlin, reflecting on current relationships, both sexual and familial. Schlöndorff's Die Stille Nach Dem Schuss, screened to terrific acclaim at the Berlin Film Festival, sets a very different pace, opening to the anarchic strains of 'Street Fighting Man'. In her feature film debut, TV actress Beglau cuts an attractive, personable figure as Rita Vogt, a former West German terrorist who struggles to hold onto a sense of self as she assumes a number of new identities, or 'legends', in an attempt to escape the authorities.
A fast-paced, identity-based thriller about characters trying to escape the effects of their past actions, Die Stille Nach Dem Schuss is an interesting companion piece to Die Innere Sicherheit and several other films selected for the festival, focusing on the all too timely issue of terrorism. The collective '70s project Deutschland Im Herbst (Germany In Autumn), which contains segments directed by both Fassbinder and Schlöndorff, examines the kidnapping and murder of executive Hans-Martin Schleyer by political terrorists, while the 1986 Golden Bear winner Stammheim is a thoroughly researched dramatisation of the Baader-Meinhof trial.
Dennis Gansel's frothy female comedy Mädchen Mädchen (Girls On Top) is another femme-centric film: a teen comedy (an 'American Strudel', if you like) following three fun-loving adolescents in search of love. While
pleasuring oneself on a bicycle seat and pulling condoms over your head aren't the usual sort of plotlines to be posted on kamera.co.uk, Mädchen Mädchen is undeniably a lot of fun and worth checking out for a giggle or two.
Finally, the festival's hot potato - and the only film in the line-up to have secured UK distribution - proved to be a resolutely masculine affair. Inspired by the Stanford prison studies of the 1960s, The Experiment is an edgy, uncompromising, voyeuristic nightmare following a group of men, including a reporter played by Moritz Bleibtreu (best known as Manni in Lola Rennt), who agree to take part in a 14-day experiment in a simulated prison. Said experiment unsurprisingly descends into sadism, humiliation and ultra-violence, with first-time feature director Oliver Hirschbiegel seemingly tipping his hat to both One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and A Clockwork Orange.
