In our Monthly Film Series, we will show a variety of GERMAN or GERMAN language films from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. On the 2nd Wednesday of each month, audiences will now have a chance to see these films on a regular basis at the CLINTON STREET THEATER. (Children movies will be playing on Sunday afternoons – please check our website.) All films are with English subtitles.

Sugarbaby (Zuckerbaby)

WED. July 10, 2019 – 7:00 PM

Germany, 1985, 86 min.

Director: Percy Adlon

Cast: Marianne Sägebrecht, Eisi Gulp, Toni Berger, Manuela Denz

She lies on the surface of a swimming pool like a dead woman. It’s a symbol of her stagnant life: a fat, unattractive woman, 38 years old, who works at a funeral home and lives in a dreary one bedroom apartment. She spends her evenings eating in bed in front of a small TV. Every day she travels to work with the subway. She’s sitting in a carriage, sleepily staring dead ahead, when a miracle occurs. The voice of the subway driver announcing the stations tears her out of her misery. When she disembarks, she briefly catches sight of the young driver, and for her that’s it. She does whatever she can to learn his name. She sneaks into the drivers’ offices and researches the duty rosters. She follows him and finds out where he lives. At the same time, she transforms herself from an ugly duckling into a colourful, attractive woman. She buys perfume, lingerie and high-heeled shoes. She purchases a large mattress and satin sheets. At last she talks to him and lures him to her apartment. She feeds her sugar baby, bathes him and sleeps with him. He meanwhile acquiesces willingly. Thanks to his ambitious, frigid wife, he’s not used to such thoughtful attention, and instead simply co-exists with her, measuring the length of their marriage in instalment payments for the bedroom. Since his wife is out of town for two weeks, he enjoys his love affair with his new girlfriend. Food, bubble baths, pinball, motorcycling. When they’re rock ‘n’ roll dancing at an Italian restaurant, his wife suddenly shows up and destroys their lovers’ idyll. She hits her rival and hustles her husband out of the restaurant. Just as at the film’s start, the funeral attendant lies like a corpse on the water’s surface. But then she screams and takes a stand. She won’t give up. At the end, we see her, all dressed up, on the subway platform waiting for her sugar baby.

Percy Adlon’s film has two nameless protagonists from humble social backgrounds. They are people who are trapped in the gloom and monotony of everyday life and are given the gift of unexpected love. While she appears to be buried alive in a funeral home – as much due to her appearance as her profession, which is socially ostracised – he’s a simple man whose life stays on track in an orderly fashion. That’s how it is, and that’s how it will always be, he says. He has no initiative, and willingly subordinates himself to women. He’s the opposite of her father, who despised and tormented her and her mother, and whose face is blacked out in the portrait of her parents that hangs over her bed.

However unlikely the story may appear, Adlon’s film makes it plausible. He shows us in detail how, almost like a detective, she gets the duty roster by sneaking into the drivers’ office and, later, has it all explained by a driver. Scenes like the conversation with the subway driver at a café table are almost casually staged, without contrived overstatement, giving a vivid impression of everyday reality. Similarly, Johanna Heer’s outstanding camerawork immerses the grey subway architecture in precise compositions filled with pink, green and blue. Love allows one to see the world from a new perspective, in this case colourful and cheerful. Detailed observations of daily life are excessive, and this excess draws us into the fairy-tale atmosphere of the story. The discreet camera movements have the same effect, as when the camera floats to recreate the motorcycle trip.

Adlon avoids clichés or presenting his characters as embarrassing or grotesque. The fascinating Marianne Sägebrecht plays her role with real dignity and a reserved charm that never seems ridiculous. Her transformation from church mouse to colourful bird comes about not only through different clothes or a new, chic hairstyle, but also her facial expression, which becomes more vibrant and radiant. Her whole appearance becomes more self-assured. Small gestures, like the way she holds a dead adoloscent’s hand almost tenderly, or her cautious attempt to dance in her new high heels, underline her character’s credibility. Eisi Gulp is also impressive in his role as the pale but sympathetic subway driver. He communicates, in a very engaging fashion, simple-mindedness and indecision. Adlon says of his character, “He’s as stupid as men sometimes are.” In his case, women definitely call the shots.

This voluptuous woman radiates sensuality and warmth, which she gives, generously and unconditionally, to her sugar baby. These sensual pleasures also include food. The way to a man’s heart is literally through his stomach: the woman cooks for, and feeds, her beloved. Daniel Toscan du Plantier writes: “Contrary to the suicidal and morbid discourse in Marco Ferreri’s ‘La Grande Bouffe’, which describes the agony of today’s world as an excess of pleasure and flesh, Zuckerbaby opens the door to an encouraging world transformed by the constructive will of a woman into a modern paradise.”

If the love affair appears to be over at the end of the film, Percy Adlon allows us to leave the cinema with fresh hope thanks to the closing shot of Marianne Sägebrecht, all dressed up on the subway platform, having got away with merely a slap on the wrist.

Biography

Percy Adlon was born in Munich in 1935. Graduate studies between 1954-58 of dramatics, German language and literature, and acting in Munich. Regular contributor with German regional broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk (Bavarian State TV and radio), as speaker and presenter, actor, literary editor and producer of documentary films. In 1978 he founds film production company pelemele. Winner of numerous awards at home and abroad.

Selected Filmography

1978 DER VORMUND UND SEIN DICHTER
1981 CÉLESTE
1982 FÜNF LETZTE TAGE
1983 DIE SCHAUKEL
1985 ZUCKERBABY (Sugarbaby)
1987 BAGDAD CAFE (OUT OF ROSENHEIM)
1989 ROSALIE GOES SHOPPING
1991 SALMONBERRIES
1993 YOUNGER & YOUNGER
1997 IN DER GLANZVOLLEN WELT DES HOTEL ADLON
1999 DIE STRAUSSKISTE
2001 HAWAIIAN GARDENS
2010 MAHLER AUF DER COUCH

29.09.2016