Beware Of A Girl's Wrath - Reviewing "Der Fan"

 

As usual, there are spoilers all over this review and it would be best to watch the movie before reading!

Not being the biggest fan of German cinema, it came as a surprise that I was delighted by the 1982 Eckardt Schmidt movie Der Fan, featuring a 17-year-old Désirée Nosbusch as the young school girl Simone who is pathologically obsessed with the singer R, played by the real-life Neue Deutsche Welle (NDW) singer Bodo Staiger. Her obsession gradually increases and intensifies in each stage of the movie, resulting in a shock move which comes unexpected, but makes sense. My surprise hails not from the fact that the movie is so good that I liked it despite it being a German film, on the contrary, we are dealing with a movie which is very much 80s and very much German, but uses that attribute to its advantage, so I liked it because of it.

What is an 80s German film anyway? According to the Deutsches Historisches Museum it is predictable, sensation-seeking and immature. I personally can add wooden acting, genuinely bad to no sense of humor and insipid treatment of halfway interesting themes.

Well, in an ironically interesting way all this works really well in Schmidt's controversial work.

Let us call this a minimalist work, in that the minimal amount of effort has been put into acting. Contrary to how this may sound, this is in actual fact not a jab at the actors, it is the trademark wooden acting style, which has been slammed by critics, used with intent by the director. The original showcasing of the film under the title "Trance" is an accurate representation of that; we follow a lovestruck Simone walking around as if in a trance, thinking of ways to reach her object of desire, the singer R. She is so one-sided as a character, her goals, wishes, so simple that it takes no genius to realize from the first scene on that this is an unhealthy level of infatuation, apparently a state of mind called erotomania. Her trance-like state, enhanced by wooden acting, is only ever interrupted by outbursts of anger and rage when a perceived obstacle presents itself between her and R, like the mailman she attacks when he doesn't bring the eagerly awaited answer to her fan mail or the time her father would rather watch a Western instead of the show program in which she hopes to receive a message from R.

R's wooden performance, on the other hand, helps to highlight his insincerity, his lack of commitment and empathy for the people around him, for Simone. A textbook example of a superstar who is used to see young girls' bodies as something to consume and discard and the nicest thing he can offer in the aftermath of sex is to let her stay at his place. Only this time R's narcissist toxic masculinity meets its match in the shape of a minor haunted by the desire of him, by a romantic delusion of happily ever after, ever willing to do everything in her power to make that delusion come true, even if it means to kill and devour it.

It caught my attention that during the movie, Simone is twice being called "du kleines Biest" (you little beast) by men trying to pursue her, which, in the subtitles, was translated as "minx" and this weird choice of wording being the reason it caught my attention in the first place, otherwise I might have missed it. "Biest" can be used in a sexual way, but also to designate a monster, an animal, derogatorily an animal-like human and so its use here gives us early hints as to Simone's nature. Or rather the nature of her obsession, which places the audience in front of a predicament in which the male "predator" (another term from the animal kingdom) intends to sexually humiliate its prey, clueless that he himself will fall prey to that very bestiality, just not in a sexual way.  

A specific use of names and designations and their symbolic task is something that's generally interesting in films, and in this particular film all the more. Let's take R, for instance. Surely, he is the singer of the band Rheingold and that's probably where the name stems from. Yet, there's also a double entendre at work, since the pronunciation of "R", in German, would be "er", the male pronoun. This, on the other hand, gives R an almost symbolic, archetypal role for "he/him", the man, turning the whole story of Der Fan into a caricaturized, sharpened representation of the struggle of the sexes, thought out in binary terms. Incidentally Simone's name begins with the same sound as "sie", the German female pronoun, she/her.

"Ich werde dich zur Welt bringen. Wir werden glücklich sein."

Simone's gradually intensifying delirium, triggered by R wanting to leave her after sex, results in her snapping, killing and devouring the object of her desire. Only to later find out that she is pregnant to his child. Now, this is a truly vicious cycle that Schmidt exhibits: fandom, love, sexual intercourse, murder, preservation of the corpse, eating the corpse, and in a morbid twist - re-producing the corpse. The fact that she eats the corpse while she was, unbeknownst to everybody, pregnant to his child, meaning she got the minerals, vitamins, nutrition necessary for the growing of a baby inside her literally from the child's father, is emphasized in her last letter to him; "Ich werde dich zur Welt bringen - I will give birth to you". Is it very sick that I love this turn of events? R has been baby-trapped for all eternity. To avoid misunderstandings - it's not women baby-trapping men that I love, it's the warpedness of this whole situation.

Speaking about eating, in this regard too there are little hints strewn throughout the film to prepare us to the culinary finale. We never see Simone eat anything during the film, she is super skinny and in one scene she is just about to eat lunch, R orders her back saying he is going to lie down a little and she leaves the food unfinished to follow him. So, by the time she kills R she hasn't eaten anything proper for days and really must be famished! (Let's avoid more misunderstandings - I'm not trying to justify her choice to eat R, certainly not because she must have been very very hungry.) The costumes play an equally capital part in preparing the audience for the true nature of the characters - ever since she travels to Munich in order to meet R, Simone wears a weird sort of blouse reminiscent of a kitchen chef's jacket (pictured right) and isn't that hilarious? Sorry, R, I think it is.

Let's stay with the costumes for a while. I have found "on the internet" a theory according to which the logo for R's band and his leather pants and his costume reminded people of the Sturmabteilung insignia and uniforms. I personally didn't see that at all while watching the movie and the people who made these comments were Americans, who, in all honesty, see something related to WWII in everything German, but I don't want to dismiss the possibility nonetheless. There are indeed a few points that would hint in that direction, first of all the weird poster on Simone's wall which shows a crowd of people looking somewhere and on a close look they might even have all of them stretched out their right arms into a Nazi salute and I'm not sure anymore if that poster is connected to R in some way. Consuming every part of R's body, even his bones which she grinds in the coffee bean grinder and dispels on the ground they first met, could be a parallel to what was done to Jewish people in concentration camps. And finally, as she shaves her head in the final moments of the picture, creating an imagery which inadvertently reminds of prisoners of said camps, a certain connection is perfectly possible, but the whole interpretation of the film would then shift into directions I don't see myself proficient enough in. I also think in shaving her head, Simone was rather imitating the hairless mannequins which feature in R's music video we first see him perform.

Having discussed the director, the acting, and the costumes, it's now time to take a look at the score. This is an NDW film and the soundtrack was performed by Rheingold. Scenes in which Simone does not listen to R on her headphones are rare, and so we too are constantly subjected to his music. I'm not complaining, I think the whole Industrial, Synth Pop, Neue Deutsche Welle style are the only music genres which one hundred percent fit the German language, and maybe even German mentality with its mechanic, machinic tact. That music is crucial for the creating of a certain signature atmosphere in Der Fan, and the closer we get to the union of Simone and R, the less melodic does the music become. Shortly before and during the sex scenes it is reduced to some hammer blows, which is uncharacteristic for a romantic scene, and conveys the feeling that this is not something nice and happy that's happening. This is doom, doom, doooom.

As expected from a movie about a minor falling for an older man, an older celebrity, played by a minor, there have been, there still is a problematic surrounding this movie. Nosbusch has accused Schmidt of never keeping his promise that her nude scenes would be cut out, which didn't happen as about a quarter of the film she is naked. That's definitely a shitty move from a director, destroying a connection based on trust, especially if it's a minor we're talking about. The film was blacklisted until 2003 anyway and Nosbusch has made her claim at a later date, still her point stands.

That being said, the time that we live in, with more and more women coming forward with their abuse stories about famous band members and music performers, is an interesting time to watch this movie. Despite rock stars like Billie Joe Armstrong, Dave Gahan or Ringo Starr who married their biggest fans and both parties are still alive, at least not murdered or devoured, there's an increasing number of accusations towards people we looked up to while growing up. The thing is, while I understand the importance to name and hold responsible the attacker, as a woman on your own, no matter what age, you should also take care of yourself, because no one else will. We often talk about this with my friend Caro who likes to go to gigs on her own. Although I'm fiercely independent and greatly value my time with myself, this is something I'd never do, mostly due to my socialization and that it's internalized in me that especially gigs, you go in a group or with your boyfriend/guy friend and leave with them too. We agree on the fact that it's still important as a cultural thing, to preserve the groupie phenomenon, live and let people live. Just don't get too obsessed and keep hydrated and nourished, so no one gets eaten. I'm being silly now. I just don't know how to finish this text, so I'll just stop here.

On a last note, I also watched Die Berührte and Good Boy, both of which I found watchable, but didn't really love. Die Berührte was based off a real story and constructed from letters from a schizophrenic woman who thought she saw Jesus in every man she meets and every man she meets knows how to take advantage of that until she burns a cross in her hallucinations and emancipates herself from religion and is unsurprisingly thus healed, hallelujah.

I think Good Boy could have been worth a watch, if it wasn't exactly what the trailer says it is - a control freak of a guy who likes people around him to wear dog costumes and act like dogs. Now, it would have been more interesting if the dog actually wanted to be a slave to this person and the reasons of this relationship had been explored, but no. The way they are now, these two weren't exactly a waste of my time, but not really worthwhile either.

And on a very last note, I really hope that Simone isn't really pregnant, that poor child...