Enfant Terrible (2020)

Directed by: Oskar Roehler | 134 minutes | biography, drama | Actors: Oliver Masucci, Hary Prinz, Katja Riemann, Felix Hellmann, Anton Rattinger, Erdal Yildiz, Markus Hering, Michael Klammer, Frida-Lovisa Hamann, Jochen Schropp, Lucas Gregorowicz, Simon Böer, Antoine Monot Jr., Désirée Nick, Michael Ostrowski , Isolde Barth, André Hennicke, Eva Mattes, Detlef Bothe, Götz Otto, Alexander Scheer

The designation enfant terrible can be obtained as a filmmaker in various ways. The motivation may be based on substantive grounds. If a film contains excessive violence or sex, the director is often raised with a raised finger. But also stylistically a film can be so deliberately non-conformist that pretensions win over involvement and entertainment. Life outside the film can also be a reason for social disqualification. A disturbed relationship with crew and cast, political or cultural idiosyncrasies and extensive use of alcohol and drugs can all color the image of a filmmaker. In the history of film there are plenty of examples of unconventional filmmakers, but rarely did they come together as with the German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

First and foremost, despite his unorthodox attitude towards both the medium of film and the world around him, Fassbinder’s oeuvre is still rock solid forty years after his death. The visual richness, sparkling in both effectiveness and symbolism, has never lost its strength. Stylistically, he has distanced himself from the sluggish design of conventional film after the Second World War. Film may, or rather should, be able to stimulate both rationally and emotionally. Rules are prohibited. Cinematographic freedom, inspired by filmmakers such as Jean-Luc Godard and the German-American Douglas Sirk, is paramount. Titles such as ‘Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant’, ‘Die Ehe der Maria Braun’ and his only English-language film ‘Despair’ are still worth watching.

In terms of content, his film also has little to do with the optimistic Heimat films of the past. Where those films avoided heavy subjects, the national consciousness had suffered enough, Fassbinder wanted to show the world as it was. The discomfort is key. Fassbinder’s work is bursting with social outsiders, sexual deviants and lonely failures, in a world that is succumbing to power and exploitation. Pessimism is rampant, but being molded into a visually imaginative and attractive mold means it never feels overly committed. The world is not there to be saved, humanity only knows passive suffering and (self) destruction.

It hasn’t stopped Fassbinder from showing tremendous productivity. In just fourteen years he makes more than forty films, writes dozens of plays and often cooperates in the work of others. Moreover, he is not only responsible for directing his own work, but often also takes care of the screenplay, production and editing. He is also regularly featured as an actor.

His unusual way of working, certainly for that time, shows why Fassbinder can be seen as an enfant terrible. Perhaps not entirely strange, to the great dissatisfaction of the director himself, that his films could count on little recognition during his short life. The general public was not supposed to know about it. And the approval of critics and cinephiles was also a long time in coming. That could have everything to do with that other part of his labeling as enfant terrible. Because as disruptive as his films are, outside of that, the director’s behavior may have been much worse. Especially if we are to believe the biopic ‘Enfant Terrible’.

The film provides a fairly schematic overview of Fassbinder’s working life, starting with his first directing jobs in the 1960s with the theater company ‘Antiteater’ until his death in 1982, overloaded with drugs and pills. ‘Enfant Terrible’ focuses mainly on the human being Fassbinder. (played by Oliver Masucci). Everything is reviewed. His distaste for the bloodless and hypocritical ideas of the previous generations. His masochistic struggle and sexual frustrations with his orientation and love. The frequent use of nicotine, alcohol and stimulants. And the later independence from cocaine. The quarrels and altercations, both with relatives and with strangers. Due to the subversive nature of the character Fassbinder, ‘Enfant Terrible’ manages to be entertaining for a long time. However, it cannot happen that the film sometimes feels like a dry enumeration of events. This is partly due to the shape.

Because even there ‘Enfant Terrible’ leaves little to the imagination. The staging consists entirely of sterile cardboard stage sets, which are perhaps closely related to the sets that Fassbinder sometimes used himself due to lack of money, but here often get in the way of the cinematographic liveliness. The over the top acting further adds to the sketchy character of the film. Camera angles are almost all classic medium waist shots, which do little good for the cinematic tension. This results in the viewer never really getting closer to the Fassbinder character. Other characters remain shrouded in mystery even further. Their motivation to join the director’s entourage for fame and fortune becomes increasingly difficult to understand after yet another argument and humiliation. Because of the theater setting, the dialogue is the driving force behind the story. Although it manages to hold the interest well, it is once again much of the same. And here too it applies that it produces little visually stimulating and uplifting cinema.

This one-sided attention to the wayward person Fassbinder is regrettable. Fassbinder, the filmmaker, is only briefly discussed. He, and that’s about all the viewer gets to hear about it, is looking for a new visual language in which rules don’t exist. This reduces a versatile oeuvre to a very simple generalization. Because Fassbinder has been so occupied with film in his short life, it is also difficult to separate people from the filmmaker. Below the line a fairly one-dimensional portrait is created: that of the eternal querulant. Whether it’s interesting to watch an all-time smirk, boozing and drugged bastard for so long, is the question.