Film review: Enfant Terrible takes a fittingly raucous look back at Rainer Fassbinder
In an over-the-top portrayal, Oliver Masucci has the sadistic German auteur’s skeezy look down—potbelly and all
In Enfant Terrible, Oliver Masucci’s Rainer Werner Fassbinder isn’t afraid to hit an actor to get a realistic response.
VIFF Connect streams Enfant Terrible to June 10
EVERYTHING IS heightened in Oskar Röhler’s stylized ode to the bad boy of the German new wave, Rainer Werner Fassbinder—a director who was never too interested in realism in the 39 films he made by his death at 37.
The artificial feel and insider references of this raucous tribute will appeal to diehard fans of the filmmaker—probably exclusively.
Most scenes are bathed in kitschy pink-hued lighting, and the sets—windows, kitchen tiles, stoves, doors—are all painted like stage backdrops, a nod to Fassbinder’s deliberate theatre influences. And the script takes on a distinctly melodramatic tone, the kind that set apart Fassbinder milestones like The Marriage of Maria Braun. (The director adored 1950s director Douglas Sirk.) He introduces El Hedi ben Salem (Erdal Yildiz) as “the love of my life”, and the pair are sometimes shot locked in romantic embrace, set to music—despite the fact Fassbinder treats the Fear Eats the Soul star, who later took his own life, with cruelty.
And then there’s Oliver Masucci’s over-the-top portrayal of the late director, who died in 1982 after a coke- and booze-fuelled heart attack. He’s got Fassbinder’s skeezy unwashed look down, his pot belly sticking out luridly from his biker jacket, and wearing the signature aviator glasses and ragged moustache, a cigarette seemingly sutured to his upper lip. In Röhler’s depiction, Fassbinder is an inspired genius who’s also a sadistic task master, belittling and browbeating his cast—unafraid to whallop them across the face while the camera’s rolling to create a real pain response. Shouting tyrades, sexual obsessions, and nonstop binging on booze and cocaine take an increasingly destructive toll. At one point the titular enfant has an extended tantrum on a film-shoot-floor while his bewildered crew of actor-hangers-on stares on in bewilderment. (“We’re shooting a film! Have you still not understood what that means?!”)
The key players in Fassbinder’s life and films appear as characters, sometimes using their real names'; actor Kurt Raab (Hary Prinz) is a standout.
Amid the hurricane, cinephiles will get a fuller picture of Fassbender’s outrageous life. Enfant Terrible begins with him bullying his way into power at Munich’s avant-garde Anti-Theatre; his early brain waves there include providing audience members with tomatoes (so they can decide to throw them or eat them) and hosing patrons with water. It goes on to show his frenetic guerilla filmmaking days, when he would not just direct but act, write, do camera work, design sets, and other tasks. We glimpse shoots for a string of those films, through to his international breakthrough—including an amusing foray into Andy Warhol’s circle.
Along the way, there are uncountable hookups, screaming matches, and breakdowns—and a maniacal output of films, with people left destroyed in Fassbinder’s wake. One has to believe there was more to Fassbinder—to his role in a generation blazing new forms and telling new kinds of German stories in the decades after World War II; to a director who conjured female characters like Veronika Voss, Maria Braun, and Petra Von Kant, or who crafted the seminal 15-hour series Berlin Alexanderplatz.
Still, it’s not hard to imagine cinema’s ultimate badass enjoying this difficult, uncompromising, and unrestrained bio pic--a tribute that's almost as transgressive as its subject was.
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