"Heller Wahn" or "Sheer Madness" or "Friends and Husbands" is a West German 105-minute movie from 1983, so this one will have its 35th anniversary soon. The writer and director is Margarethe von Trotta, who, at this point, was still married to Volker Schlöndorff and she was around the age of 40 when she made this film. It is not one of her most known works, but also not one of her lesser-known films. The cast includes a handful actors and actresses who were fairly popular back then and this does only refer to the two lead actresses Hanna Schygulla and Angela Winkler. von Trotta is today mostly known for her very female-centered works (such as "Die bleierne Zeit") and this is another example. But I must say there was nothing really memorable about this film here.
The filmmaker often has a tendency to lose herself in pretentious dialogues and characterizations of women that may seem interesting on paper perhaps, but when put on screen, it all seems so try-hard and forced that I never had the opinion that I was watching actually existing people. And it is not because I have seen too much from Schygulla and Winkler and only see the actresses perhaps for that reason. I have seen some of their other works, but not that much really. These two actresses (especially Winkler) also don't work well in here. Of course, they have the virtually impossibly challenge to make von Trotta's dialogues seem honest, but they aren't giving good portrayals here either. Sometimes they are over the top, sometimes they seem as fake as the words they are saying.
As a whole, this was a really forgettable film that lacked the realism that Fassbinder for example managed to give his characters during that time. von Trotta, in terms of what I have seen from her, frequently reminded me of a (very) poor man's version of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, one of Germany's finest filmmakers. It is obvious he inspired her a lot. But she does not have half his talent which makes her works look usually very contrived and fake and this is especially sad as the messages about emancipation (very frequent in her works) deserve a much better quality of filmmaking because it's an important subject. Instead, von Trotta writes weak scripts and directs her actors to very hammy performances. I certainly do not recommend the watch here.Four stars out of ten is almost a bit too much. Stay away.
The filmmaker often has a tendency to lose herself in pretentious dialogues and characterizations of women that may seem interesting on paper perhaps, but when put on screen, it all seems so try-hard and forced that I never had the opinion that I was watching actually existing people. And it is not because I have seen too much from Schygulla and Winkler and only see the actresses perhaps for that reason. I have seen some of their other works, but not that much really. These two actresses (especially Winkler) also don't work well in here. Of course, they have the virtually impossibly challenge to make von Trotta's dialogues seem honest, but they aren't giving good portrayals here either. Sometimes they are over the top, sometimes they seem as fake as the words they are saying.
As a whole, this was a really forgettable film that lacked the realism that Fassbinder for example managed to give his characters during that time. von Trotta, in terms of what I have seen from her, frequently reminded me of a (very) poor man's version of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, one of Germany's finest filmmakers. It is obvious he inspired her a lot. But she does not have half his talent which makes her works look usually very contrived and fake and this is especially sad as the messages about emancipation (very frequent in her works) deserve a much better quality of filmmaking because it's an important subject. Instead, von Trotta writes weak scripts and directs her actors to very hammy performances. I certainly do not recommend the watch here.Four stars out of ten is almost a bit too much. Stay away.