Rent The Nasty Girl (1989)

Don't mention the war... - The Nasty Girl review by Kurtz

A film that tries to address the vexed issue of what some older members of modern German communities got up to during the Nazi period. A young girl starts trying to do some research into who did what in her town during the war, but soon meets a wall of silence, hostility and eventually intimidation. The director throws us all kinds of curve balls and alienation techniques to underline the film’s artifice- characters address the camera, scenes take place against back-lit projections and once, memorably, the family’s front room is transplanted into a crowded market square- all so that we can’t just take refuge in the story and have to ponder the issues. He also keeps dropping in unexpectedly humorous moments to break the mood of menace. All in all, an unsettling but intriguing watch.

Truth Bomb - The Nasty Girl review by Steve

Fascinating dissection of postwar German guilt and denial. It is based on a real life young woman- Anna Rosmus- who investigates the secrets and lies of the respectable, stalwart conservatives of her provincial hometown who lived under the Nazis regime; and sometimes enthusiastically collaborated.

She is routinely blocked in her attempts to access public records and maligned and violently assaulted by the former disciples of the Third Reich, including the church. Plus a new generation of neo-Nazis. Lena Stolze plays the title character who presents her discoveries to camera as an irreverent lecture.

There are comical inserts and daydreams, but gradually the mood gets darker as the forces that oppose her research become ever more threatening. Writer/director Michael Verhoeven reflects on all sides of the issues, but this eventually becomes a polemic aimed at injustice and bourgeoise hypocrisy.

And we learn that there were concentration camps on the border of the community. It's a counter-view of the Geman Heimat, which implies that only the occupation prevented a post-WWII West German civil war. Yes it's a dramatised dissertation, but it makes its case with wit, imagination and intelligence.