The Nasty Girl (1990)

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

There are two films that should be seen back to back as examples of the Wise Fool. One is THE NASTY GIRL, the other; EUROPA (ZENTROPA, English title). Both take on collusion by the German people during and after World War II. Both are Miramax, Weinstein brothers films. THE NASTY GIRL is hilarious and based on a true story. It illuminates an ordinary German small town. A very idealistic, intelligent, agreeable "good German girl" wins a school essay award. Acknowledged by family, teacher and the powerful, she tries to win another, but this time the topic is 'what did your German town do during the time period from 1939-1945?"Dutifully, intelligently, without a single shred of awareness, she begins to dig into the myths of freedom fighters and the good German people in the town she loves. But as any archaeologist will tell you, don't dig if you're not ready to find dead bodies. The myths are all lies. Instead she's uncovering how those in power, in government and the church, colluded for money, power, property and status against their Jewish and Communist neighbors, even revealing her own collusions as a child with the myth of being a good person. Step by step, this great study of collusion, shows how the voice of history is silenced, even by "winning." The most powerful image occurs when investigating and writing about these "nasty" elements surrounding her, she sees she is falling into a Joan of Arc role about to be burned at the stake, for which the religious element in her town will get their jollies. Even worse is the Victor role, where she vanquishes the lies and wins, only to be embalmed in the glamor of the powerful giving her another award, if only it will force her to shut up. Surprise ending, Does she fall for either of these scenarios? See it. See collusion the silent killer, dissected under a very powerful microscope. Then look around you with the tools you've been given.

A young German woman investigates her town's involvement during the Third Reich. The presentation is quirky, with Stolze at times stepping out of character to directly address the audience. There's also the occasional use of theatrical backgrounds, as well as having the living room furniture seemingly floating in the streets. It's clever and amusing, but seems out of place with the theme of the movie. After the light-hearted start, things turn serious as Stolze goes about trying to dig up information on her town's history. Not only is the transition jarring, but the film bogs down. Stolze gives a lively performance, convincingly aging from adolescence to adulthood.

The reviewers do not exaggerate, this really is a fine movie. Don't let the subtitles stop you. Lead actress gives a very fine performance as a woman who grows up in a nice, funny town full of basically good people who lived under the Nazis during Hitler's rule. As she grows and studies the world around her she discovers hints of past and present that were not obvious at first. Let us just say that life under the Nazis absolutely required compromise that could amount to dreadful criminal activity by any civilized standard, and old influences die hard. This woman becomes the catalyst of social change and historic preservation, driving herself to the brink of madness and risking her life in the process. This movie is great fun anyway. The fun humor and joy of life never quite go away, even when events turn dramatic and dangerous. I just can't say enough about the artistry and skill that went into this movie. If you see it and you grew up in a town populated by fallible human beings you may feel charged up by the breathtaking emotional ride toward a better world.

Verhoeven incorporated Brechtian aesthetics in Das Schreckliche Madchen (The Nasty Girl) using dissociation devices. For example, Lena Stolze (playing Sonja) uses a form of acting class gestic. The actor doesn't completely embrace the role, rather resists and narrates it so you can tell the acting is false. Her acting helps us attain insights about stereotypical social relationships, which is an aim of epic theater. Sonja was quoting hyper romanticized behavior in order to make a point. Sonja's character critiques existing stereotypes of the roles women play in society. For example, by forcefully leaning her head on her husband's shoulder after marriage shows that it isn't a natural behavior. It is a symbol of romantic gesturing that we are taught to accept as natural. One can tell this action is produced and dramatized to allow the audience to think about women's roles in society. A woman putting her head on a male's shoulder implies she leans to her husband for support or guidance. This gesture implies women hold a passive and dependent role in society, where they look to the husband for support, and hold non-active roles in the outside community. For example, women are taught to cook and clean in order to be good housewives and to support a family. When a film is passed from one culture to another, it is not marketed as it would be in its original country. I think that American distributors view femaleness with little regards or respect by the way they market films. If they were to give more respect to the way femaleness is viewed, then they would have given this film the correct amount of accuracy it deserved. For instance, as `The Nasty Girl' passed from the German culture to the American culture, the way it was advertised did not represent the film in all actuality. First of all, the title gives a misleading impression. There is nothing nasty about Sonja's character. The title should have been translates into something like `The girl with courage' from having no support from her town in her quest to uncover the hidden truth about the town's involvement with the Nazis. Due to the misleading translation of the title, the film is often put in the adult section of the video store when there is nothing pornographic about the film's content. Also, the outside box cover is red, which symbolized promiscuity. Another example of how the film was marketed poorly in the US is the summary on the outside box cover. The summary says nothing about the historical content or even what it is about; instead it portrays something more promiscuous. This portrays how the American culture's primary concern is making a profit. The marketers of the film feel if they can get it to sound more enticing, more people will view the film. Apparently they will go to extremes such as misinforming the viewer about the content in the film in order to make the film seem more attractive to the viewers' eye. They take the audient for granted, and have no problem in exploiting the viewer's horizon of expectations.