The Film Stage by Ethan Vestby
Enfant Terrible feels like one missed opportunity after another.
Germany · 2020
2h 14m
Director Oskar Roehler
Starring Oliver Masucci, Hary Prinz, Katja Riemann, Jochen Schropp
Genre Drama, History
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This biopic traces the impact of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the iconic and supremely talented director of the German New Wave. Fassbinder’s films critique the exclusionary aspects of traditional German society, while championing outsiders—foreigners, underprivileged groups, and small-time criminals. One of the most important European directors of his time, his success came at great personal cost.
The Film Stage by Ethan Vestby
Enfant Terrible feels like one missed opportunity after another.
Screen Daily by Jonathan Romney
Enfant Terrible is somewhat repetitive – ever more shouting, more hedonism, more tainted glory – but it’s never boring. It’s just not very insightful – full marks for the style, but the substance is best found in the books, and in the various documentaries about the man.
The New York Times by Nicolas Rapold
The film feels both hermetic and declarative, and it’s folly to constantly remind a viewer of Fassbinder’s impossible-to-replicate alchemy of color, lighting, angles and passion.
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
It gives you a good idea of what a nightmare he must have been to work for, and the 24/7 tumult that drove his work. Fassbinder was the nearest an auteur came to punk rock.
Masucci’s intensely charismatic Fassbinder, bathed in cigarette smoke, working “26 hour days” even before the cocaine and barbiturate addictions that took over later, looks like walking death the moment we meet him. That lets Enfant Terrible reinforce the suspicion that Fassbinder is more famous for his excesses than his films, 40 years after his death.
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