DER FAN / The Fan (aka Trance)
(Eckhart Schmidt, Germany, 1982, 92 minutes)
My need to possess you has consumed my soul
My life is trembling, I have no control
–Michael Des Barres and Holly Knight, "Obsession" (1983)
There's nothing more terrifying than a teenage girl.
Granted, teenage girls have been mooning over pop stars for decades, but the late German filmmaker Eckhart Schmidt took that basic idea and ran with it all the fucking way. His 1982 psychological thriller has now been restored in 4K and premieres in the US at New York's Metrograph on Friday.
Simone (17-year-old Luxembourg actress Désirée Nosbusch, who looks like '80s Diane Lane from some angles and '70s Jenny Agutter from others), a high school student, is crazy about new wave musician R (Rheingold singer Bodo Staiger, whose Düsseldorf band also performed the score), a mononym like Robin Scott, who recorded as M when he released 1979's "Pop Muzik."
of Rheingold
Because of her looks, her leather pants, and her propensity to wander around Ulm unaccompanied, men of various ages try to pick her up, and she seems distinctly uncomfortable with the attention. Eckhart suggests she isn't interested in real men at all, just the fantasy version who lives in her head.
R follows up with a little private time in the green room where they share a kiss. More significantly, he leaves the studio after the taping with her and not the dagger-staring blonde. It's probably happened many times before, but Simone doesn't care; she's convinced she's the only one who counts.
Simone was expecting a night of passion, except things end just as they were beginning to heat up as R suddenly announces that he needs to get back to his team to smooth things over, since he had left in a bit of a huff when they started to make demands he didn't feel like dealing with at the moment.
In Keir-La Janisse's essential guide to cinematic women on the edge, House of Psychotic Women, she describes Der Fan as "more art film than exploitation film," and she's spot on, even as other writers have described it as Euroshock or various shades of horror. They're not completely wrong, but it does have a certain icy elegance that takes it into a different register.
The same could be said of Eckhart Schmidt, since Désirée Nosbusch spends an entire extended sequence in the altogether.
Schmidt presents Der Fan, his third film, from Simone's point of view as the mostly-silent superfan gives voice(over) to her every thought. It isn't just about loving R's chilly, synth-based music, which she listens to incessantly, but about loving the gentle, caring man who rules her fantasies, so she writes him letter after letter, undeterred by the fact that he never writes back--after all, plenty of other girls do the same--but she's certain he loves her; he just doesn't know it yet. (Rheingold's quintessentially Germanic music splices Kraftwerk with Bowie in Berlin.)
Compared to R, everything else falls away: school, parents, even food (every time Simone sits down to eat she's interrupted). The teen crush is a universal phenomenon, except Simone doesn't even share her obsession with friends, because she doesn't have any. She's a pretty young woman with adorably crooked teeth and an enviable wardrobe from a middle class, two-parent household, but she has little going for her personality-wise.
She even gets aggressive with the postman (Klaus Münster)--the closest thing she has to a friend--after weeks without a letter from R. She goes so far as to accuse the other postal workers of also keeping them from her.
She confirms her lack of interest in reality when she throws her books away after daydreaming through her classes. After her dad threatens to send her to boarding school, she packs a bag and runs off to Munich, where she has more uncomfortable encounters with inferior men on her way to meet the superior R, who will surely sweep her off her feet. And he kind of does.
Simone waits outside a television studio where she knows he'll be taping an episode of "Top Pop," and one day he magically appears, but instead of asking for an autograph, like all the other female fans, she stares and stares…and faints. When she comes to, with R looking over her, she's in the studio, where he invites her to sit in the stands while he prepares. It's 40 minutes into the picture, and she finally says more than a few words when he comes over for a friendly chat before the performance while his assistant and sometime (or wannabe) girlfriend stares daggers at the two of them.
Instead of his hotel, R takes her to the modernist home of an associate who's away in the US. This seems risky in the pre-cellphone era, not least when one of these people is more than a little sexually inexperienced.
Once they cross the threshold, Eckhart also slips into a more arty mode in terms of the staging, lighting, and camera work. It isn't psychedelic necessarily, but everything seems off-kilter.
Clothes come off and the usual things happen, but this isn't The Wall. Simone is a teenager, yes, but R isn't aggressive, though the Rheingold score has an eerie, The Hunger vibe to it.
So, he gets dressed and prepares to leave while Simone remains undressed. He gives her the key and swears he'll be back, but he doesn't clock how agitated she's becoming as he appears to move ever so slowly towards the door. Then, she screams. And screams again, and makes her move. Suffice to say, now he's well and truly hers, because he isn't going anywhere. Ever.
What happens next plays out in darkness after Simone hears voices outside and turns off the light to evade detection. Tears roll down her face as she does what she does; you can make of that what you will. If you've read anything about the film, you'll have some idea what's in store, but I won't spoil the surprise, other than to say that Eckhart relies more on suggestion than special effects. Simone may be a poor student, but she's a clever girl.
Though Bodo Staiger never acted in another feature, he's convincing as a narcissist who sees the comely admirer as willing, yet fails to really see her or hear what she's saying. It may be a problem she's struggled with her whole life: no one ever really saw or heard her, so she turned inward and stayed there. When she's with her parents, for instance, they only seem concerned that she attends school, eats her dinner, and that's about it.
With R, Simone drops hints that she isn't just another fan, but he misses them, maybe wilfully. If he isn't as cold or as cruel as I expected, he's still an experienced adult man taking advantage of a vulnerable young woman.
A known quantity in Germany at the time, she went to court to get the uncut version suppressed, but the filmmaker prevailed, leading to a falling out, though Eckhart got his, in a manner of speaking, since the film has suffered every imaginable indignity over the years, though the various adulterated versions have also helped to make it a curiosity, a collectible, and a cult classic.
Years later, Nosbusch and Eckhart would reconcile, but I can see why it was a difficult shoot and why she had regrets, and yet I can't imagine anyone else in the role. Simone is so closed-off to everyone except the man who lives in her head that she could have been off-putting, but she's magnetic.
After Der Fan, she continued to act for another five decades. Unlike Eckhart and Staiger, she's still with us (still exceptionally attractive, too). I hope she's made her peace with the film, because it's one in which a casually predatory man won't go on, because he can't go on, and a very hungry young lady will finally sit down at an elegant table to enjoy a hearty meal.
Der Fan was previously available on home video through Mondo Macabro, but the new Fun City Editions release marks the US theatrical debut. It's the star attraction in Metrograph's series That Most Taboo of Red Meats featuring House, In My Skin, Jennifer's Body, Raw, and Spider Baby. No Seattle dates yet, but if you're up for a road trip, Der Fan plays Portland's Hollywood Theatre on Sept 20. Images from the IMDb (Désirée Nosbusch, Nosbusch with Klaus Münster, and Simone Brahmann staring daggers), Spotify (Rheingold portrait), and Mondo Digital (Nosbusch with Bodo Staiger).
No comments:
Post a Comment