sharonkathleenjohnson

Dad turns to daughter and asks, "Are you sure you're ready for this?" Not in a million years would my dad drop me off in a big city on my own that young! But Denmark, you know, bohemians. Paris is Paris and if you look like a model, the sky's the limit for how far you can go. It's the #me too era as well as the era of tall skinny gawky adolescents ruling the fashion world like exotic doe-eyed giraffes. Magical eye-candy meets mean streets in this country-girl-goes-to-the-big-city to strut her stuff in palatial minimalist settings. Welcome to the jungle. The dialog, the Brian Epsteins, the conflicts, the abuse, and the assaults are believable, naturalistic, and unfiltered, choreographed from unusual angles and you-are-right-there cinematography. All is not right in fashion Disneyland for the awkward strangely gorgeous heroine, whose interpretation of the somewhat psychotic lead charactor is so spot on, for all we know she is that person. A person l know well. A child woman who in her eagerness to please and pander to a predatory phantasmagoric industry, is gobbled up like a popcicle on a hot summer day. But who knows, maybe for some ambitious canny dangerous femme fatales, the cost of fame is worth it in the end.

This is a surprising lime-twist of an ashcan-school-of-art film. Down-on-their-luck swindlers, gangsters, and prostitutes hash out their shabby and dimwit existences with surprising and contradictory moments of ethical thinking. I wouldn't dream of spoiling the ending for you, but you will be gobsmacked. Nothing and nobody in this commentary on human degradation is predictable. Railroad stations, back alleys, city cacophony, and callous even murderous machismo seems to rule. But justice is served with a genius gyration of motives and modus operandi. Who would have thought that ten wrongs make a right? That there are angels in this world and they are sometimes the last person you would expect?

The beginning of the story has few hints of the unexpected heart-stopping conclusion. A university student is studying soil samples in a remote forested part of Bavaria. Her own father had mysteriously died in that vicinity when she was a young girl. Locals seem intimidated by her search, however, and this leads to explosive secrets becoming painstakingly unearthed. I don't want to be a spoiler so trust me, the slow burn of the unveiling process in this heartbreaker of a story is riveting. Clues are dispenced subtly and begrudgingly and even l, the world's best predictor of movie endings, couldn't have told you where this movie was going. What a commentary on selfish and self-centered human nature!