Berlinale Dispatch. Madonnas.

Sandra Hüller's Rita, who has left four of her five children with her mother (Susanne Lothar) while she's off in Belgium, out of reach of the German authorities who'll toss her in a correctional facility the moment the Belgians spit her back out (it doesn't take long) in Maria Speth's Madonnen (Madonnas), is possessed of nothing at all other than her immediate whims. To state the obvious first, the role is quite a departure from Michaela Klinger, the young woman who wrestles with demons, real or projected, and becomes the captivating vortex at the center one of last year's most intriguing Berlinale entries, Requiem.

I'm glad David D'Arcy and I got into yesterday's screening of Madonnas; how could the Forum programmers not have expected throngs? Hüller won raves and a Silver Bear for her performance Requiem and Madonnas is only the second film the highly acclaimed stage actress has yet appeared in. But we got in, and the moment the screen went black and the final credits began to roll, David turned to me and all but exploded.

David: That was re-lent-less.
Me [emphatic]: Yes.
David: You know, I kept thinking of the Dardenne brothers because...
Me: Well, they're co-producers.
David: Ah! [nodding vigorously] That would explain a lot.

By the time we were out in the brisk winter air, we were also in the mood to shake off some of the non-stop tension that had wound up tight over the last two hours.

David: That made the Dardennes look like...
Me: The Coen brothers?
David: [laughing] No, the Farrelly brothers!

What is it about Madonnas that could spark such immoderation? The answer's certainly not to be found in Maria Speth's understated synopsis, which reads in part, "This is a portrait of a woman who claims her mother was never a mother to her. She has several children of her own but she foists them off on her mother and thus forces her to take on the role she denied her daughter."

True enough, but this only begins to suggest the pain of watching Rita make one terribly wrong choice after another with such chilling, matter-of-fact ease. One could accuse Speth of wielding the kids-in-peril bludgeon over a viewer's emotions, but it would be a hard charge to press since she directs so impartially. She doesn't so much tell her story as observe it.

But she's not the only one. You know these kids are hurting as they get bounced from one home that's hardly home to the next and back again, but it hurts you more that they don't show it. There are few tears here, no wails and even the angry outbursts are rare - and usually Rita's.

Two notes. First, Hüller is, unsurprisingly, absolutely absorbing.

Second, three of Rita's five children are half-black. She and her friends spend a whole lot of time, onscreen and off, in bars with American soldiers, preferably black. She tells Marc (Coleman Swinton), her current... guy (Rita would be too non-commital to call him a boyfriend; he's just Marc, who happens to be around more than any other at the moment), that another of her black American guys calls Germany "a paradise for black men."

There are issues here to sort out once the festival fever has faded.

Posted by dwhudson at February 10, 2007 12:27 PM