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The fall from Metropolis to faux-cyberpunk Berlin, the Postmodern situation. The New World Order wears a metallic patina, Germany ca. 1989 is the superpower where every problem from alcohol to pollution has been airbrushed and mega-corporate monopolies reign supreme. Creativity breaks the law under totalitarian rule, a plot to bomb the conglomerate headquarters gets the police lieutenant (Rainer Werner Fassbinder) out of the discotheque and on the case. Marathon giggling contests on TV screens, suicides written off as "accidental deaths'" (a typically deadpan response: "Overdose. Too much sugar in his dreams'"), such are the component parts of Wolf Gremm's future-noir vaudeville. An elevator between floors reveals the conspirators' hideout, though not before Franco Nero turns up in faded fatigues and specs with a single black lens, possibly to ask his co-star why they're not filming Querelle. ("Please avoid all superfluous explanations" is the inspector's byword, not an unreasonable attitude in the face of frenetic clutter.) To adjust Dr. Mabuse for the gaudy early Eighties is to pass through Alphaville and Fassbinder's World on a Wire, and here's Fassbinder himself on the screen mocking the results, a Wellesian pirouette in leopard bathrobes over tangerine vaquero shirts. The jumbled mise en scène of peeling paint and blasting phosphorescence, complete with rooftop chases and a computer with a bad cough, at least closes on the wunderkind's perverse, lopsided smile. Kelly's Southland Tales comes along in due time. With Günther Kaufmann, Boy Gobert, Arnold Marquis, Richy Müller, Nicole Heesters, Brigitte Mira, Petra Jokisch, and Hans Wyprächtiger.
--- Fernando F. Croce |