Using stylised images and theatrical backdrops that are often reminiscent of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's cinematic masterpieces, Oskar Roehler stages a tour de force through the excessive life and polarising work of the legendary filmmaker, dominated by a hunger for love, drug excesses, and a work mania between genius and madness.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945-82), the focus of Oskar Roehler's cinematic commemoration, remains without doubt the most important German filmmaker of the last 60 years. From the early days at the Munich Action Theatre and the shoots of early films such as Love Is Colder than Death (1969) to the screening of Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974) at Cannes or the press conference after winning the Golden Bear for Veronika Voss (1982), Enfant Terrible is as much of an episodic revue through Fassbinder's work as it is also a thorough evisceration of his colourful private life – the humiliations poured upon his entourage, and the insatiable hunger for love underlying everything: the mania to produce, the excess of drugs, the genius, the madness, the tragedy, the death. Roehler not only uses a theatrical and stylised aesthetic inspired by Fassbinder's own cinematic universe, but is also ably supported by a superb ensemble of actors.



What the critics say:
"Roehler exorcises all gravitas, all semblances of hagiography and the idolisation of genius, from the Fassbinder cosmos. When Fassbinder lies on the sofa and intones that he is going to make seven films next year, he sounds like a provincial braggart – but he actually does go on to make seven films in 1970. It is this atmosphere that Roehler creates in the scenes from the life of the artist that makes Enfant Terrible so unique (...). Roehler shows the sadism, the dictatorial tendencies, and the head games within the film family. The despair, the love, the boredom. (...) Fassbinder cries in the bathtub after his great love Armin Meier kills himself. But Meier, too, had continually been humiliated by Fassbinder. The plethora of cocaine and Cuba Libres are not missing, nor the female names for the men (Fassbinder himself was called 'Mary'), the sometimes almost joylessly mechanical sex, the autograph after a blowjob in a New York disco. Nor the ugly sentences, the discrimination of one Günther Kaufmann ('Get me another Negro!'). When it comes to the standards of political correctness, to the contemporary expectations of the #MeToo generation, you can write off Fassbinder pretty quickly. Contradiction is too omnipresent, including the contradictions of the suffocating, post-war German world that Fassbinder's films deal with almost obsessively. Anyone familiar with Oskar Roehler also knows that this is what appealed to him in the material. (...)
Lawyers also indirectly contributed to the writing of the screenplay. Every sentence in the film was 'gone over', every name. Some members of the film family refused to allow their names to be used. That's why there is no Hanna Schygulla, Margit Carstensen or Irm Hermann in Enfant Terrible. But there is a Harry Baer, Kurt Raab and Peter Berling. And because he was not permitted to directly cite the films, Roehler, who is also a writer, developed a delight in cunning circumvention, in how one can legally and unassailably achieve exactly what one envisions by means of only a few select tweaks." (Peter Körte, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 4.10.2020)


"Fassbinder is played by Oliver Masucci, who is a sensation. From the beginning he exudes an almost metaphysical despair, impatience with life, and raging thirst for living, all sharing fluid boundaries with a weariness of both humanity and life. Masucci turns smoking into breathing, becomes one with his artificial fat gut, and oscillates between an awareness of geniality, 'assholism', and the need for love. Even when screaming uninhibitedly, the actor bestows Fassbinder with a mental sharpness that the script, unfortunately, rarely imparts upon him (...) The problem with Enfant Terrible is its anti-intellectualism and the reduction of Fassbinder to a choleric child. In addition to the humiliations, the abuse of power, sex and drugs (...), there is no narrative aspect that illuminates Fassbinder as the obsessed German social analyst that he was. As the director who, ultimately, was broken by bringing to the screen, with great empathy, that which broke him." (Katja Nicodemus, Die Zeit, 41/2020, 1.10.2020)

Frederik Lang (10.03.2021)

Production Country

Germany (DE)

Production Period

2019/2020

Production Year

2020

color

color

Duration

Feature-Length Film (61+ Min.)

Type

Feature Film

Genre

Biography / Portrait

Topic

Visual Arts / Design / Photography, Love, Relationship / Family, LGBTIQ / Queer, Sexuality, Film History

Available Media

DVD, Blu-ray Disc, DCP

Original Version

German (de), English (en), French (fr)

DVD

Subtitles

English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (short), Arabic (ar), Russian (ru), Thai (th)

Blu-ray Disc

Subtitles

English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (short), Arabic (ar), Russian (ru), Thai (th), German (full), German (partly)

Note on the Format

Zusätzlich englische und thailändische UT gemeinsam im Bild

DCP

Subtitles

English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (short), Arabic (ar), Russian (ru), Thai (th), German (full), German (partly), Czech (cs), Turkish (tr)

Note on the Format

DCP sind verschlüsselt, zusätzlich englische und thailändische UT gemeinsam im Bild