Malina (1991)

German director Werner Shroeter unfortunately never became as well known as other directors of his generation and origin (Fassbinder, Wenders, Herzog). I had the chance to discover him years ago and was truly impressed. It's hard for one to describe him. His films are strange, surreal, they are just too much! It's this kind my most favorite, that one I always seek It's as if John Waters, David Lynch or maybe Louis Bunuel dropped something from their uniqueness into Shroeter's mind and then he evolved it into something more special and personal! To all this, add the obsession of the director with opera and then we maybe can have a picture of his work. Anyway, about this film. This flick, "Malina", is a work of art. Isabelle Huppert is a great actress anyway. But, in this particular one, she overcomes herself. If the Oscar is the ultimate award to an actor then we are talking about an award winning performance. Unfortunately though - and this is a huge issue to be analyzed within a few sentences- there are plenty of times when these awards go to actors who don't deserve it. I think it would be fair to acknowledge productions outside and beyond the USA. Of course American independent cinema is amazingly worthy but sadly 80% of it is ignored by the Academy. I am going to rate this film with a nine though it doesn't need my rate. It's so extraordinary that it's above judgment.

"Malina" is a German/Austrian co-production that resulted in a French/German-language film, but I believe the only French thing here is lead actress Isabelle Huppert and she spoke her parts in her native language and got dubbed by Lisa Kreuzer. This film is from 1991, so it has its 25th anniversary this year. It is possibly the most known work by director Werner Schroeter and the two Austrian writers, Ingeborg Bachmann and Elfriede Jelinek, are somewhat famous today too, at least here in Germany. The film was a huge success at the German Film Awards where it did not only take home the big prize, but also received trophies for directing, lead acting and editing. I cannot share the praise, however. While I occasionally liked Huppert's performance, I felt that overall the story as well as the minor characters were really not even close to being captivating enough for a two-hour film unfortunately. German film fans will see more familiar faces such as Peter Kern or Mathieu Carrière. But they did not sparkle my interest in this film either. Then again, I must say I am a bit biased here as I have seen Schroeter's most known works (5 years after his death) and I was very much underwhelmed by pretty much everything I saw. But I must also say that this one here is entirely different than his work with Montezuma for example and I guess this is also why it is more easily accessible for awards bodies as it received more outside the German Film Awards. But like I said, I cannot share the praise here and this film's success is just another piece of evidence for me that the 1990s started fairly weak for German cinema and the great films of reunited Germany followed years later, not yet so quickly. I give this one a thumbs-down. It dragged on several occasions and Huppert wasn't that good either, just not as bad as the rest about the film. Watch something else instead.

I just saw two of Schröeter's films (admittedly much earlier, by about a decade, when his career, such as it was, was just beginning). The first was some unnamed cheap piece of boring fluff where he uses mildly artistic backdrops to pretend his (mostly undressed, the only virtue of the film) characters are on a world tour, and der Bomberpilot—translation available—in which three female (and only occasionally nude) friends go from entertaining Hitler on stage to boring hundreds, on stage and in this film, in a self-indulgent plot-less (sorry, the IMDb editor refuses to print that as one word, so I had to add a hyphen) semi-musical—without any musicality—European and American—sense a theme here?—romp nearly as pointless as the previous film. No pilot of any kind, nor any war planes, make an appearance, though a 707 plays a brief supporting role.With that, and also, like Shane Anderson previously on this page, being a massive Bachmann fan and awed Malina admirer, and having read the reviews here and the scant criticism available on German sites (that should tell you something), I feel no loss in having decided not to even bother seeing it at all tonight, tho it was being shown, with subtitles (my German is good enough for reading, not good enough for plays and movies), a mere 9 blocks from my house. I suggest you do the same.I can vouch for Anderson's terse yet comprehensive summation without having seen what even ten years into Schröeter's career can only be, in his incapable hands, another travesty, despite having secured the estimable Huppert. As to commenter JustApt's insight into the 'animal' anagram of the title, it's useful to know that there are NO German cognates for animal, the German word for which is 'Tier'.

Malina is incredibly complex drama on the nature of insanity and to watch it, especially in the beginning, is quite a labour. A woman believes that she is a writer and all her men are fruits of her ill consciousness or personages of her unwritten book or alter egos of her split imagination. And episode after episode her consciousness keeps deteriorating more and more but the end breaks everything once again so all that was happening comes up in absolutely different light and changes its meaning. Malina is an anagram of 'animal' and it isn't accidental but symbolic to the entire surrealistic content of the film. Malina is unique and utterly fabulous movie having many layers of narration and visualization.