My review was written in March 1990 after a New Directors/New FIlms screening at MoMA.
Recently making the fest circuit, this Luxembourg feature about young people clashing in a provincial town in the early '60s is amateurish and incoherent with no chance of U. S. distribution.
Fledgling helmer Andy Bausch bites off too much material, presenting a vast cast and confusingly edited subplots in limning the "Breaking Away" genre conflicts of French-speaking and German-speaking folks in the town of Dudelange.
It's New Year' Eve 1963 and Birol Unele (as Rocco) is back in town with gangsters on his tail. He and most other cast members have a crush on Desiree Nosbusch, a striking Marthe Keller type. Tempers flare throughout the film due to regional differences, culminating in poorly staged violence and a nonending.
As a portrait of provincial attitudes, the film would have worked better with a linear script focusing on fewer characters. Decision to stress intentionally bad music (culminating in an a capella performance of "Quano, Quando" at the party) gives the pic little to fall back on. There are no hit songs of the period used, even the Little Richard "Tutti Frutti" from which pic's title is lifted does not appear. A jazz background score is anachronistic, representing a synthesized sound not in vogue until a decade after the film's time frame.
Cast members are attractive, especially Nosbusch, Serge Wolf and Sabine Berg, but fail to develop interesting characters. The extremely grainy blowup from 16mm of Klaus-Peter Weber's harshly lit, black & white photography gives the film an amateur aspect and doesn't work in the interior scenes, particularly the party.
Recently making the fest circuit, this Luxembourg feature about young people clashing in a provincial town in the early '60s is amateurish and incoherent with no chance of U. S. distribution.
Fledgling helmer Andy Bausch bites off too much material, presenting a vast cast and confusingly edited subplots in limning the "Breaking Away" genre conflicts of French-speaking and German-speaking folks in the town of Dudelange.
It's New Year' Eve 1963 and Birol Unele (as Rocco) is back in town with gangsters on his tail. He and most other cast members have a crush on Desiree Nosbusch, a striking Marthe Keller type. Tempers flare throughout the film due to regional differences, culminating in poorly staged violence and a nonending.
As a portrait of provincial attitudes, the film would have worked better with a linear script focusing on fewer characters. Decision to stress intentionally bad music (culminating in an a capella performance of "Quano, Quando" at the party) gives the pic little to fall back on. There are no hit songs of the period used, even the Little Richard "Tutti Frutti" from which pic's title is lifted does not appear. A jazz background score is anachronistic, representing a synthesized sound not in vogue until a decade after the film's time frame.
Cast members are attractive, especially Nosbusch, Serge Wolf and Sabine Berg, but fail to develop interesting characters. The extremely grainy blowup from 16mm of Klaus-Peter Weber's harshly lit, black & white photography gives the film an amateur aspect and doesn't work in the interior scenes, particularly the party.
