FAREWELL TO FALSE PARADISE
A film review by Thomas E. Billings
Copyright 1990 Thomas E. Billings
Synopsis: A Turkish woman is sentenced to six years in a West German prison for murdering her abusive husband. She slowly adapts to prison life, learns to speak German, and looks forward to her future life. However, problems arise -- she is to be deported to Turkey, where she will be retried, and faces a probable death sentence. An emotional portrait of a suffering woman, rather slow moving at times.
West Germany (English subtitles), color, 1988, 92 minutes. Director/Writer: Tevfik Baser; based on the novel "Women Who Died Without Having Lived", by Salina Scheinhardt.
This film is a sequel to Tevfik Baser's first film, 40 SQUARE METERS IN GERMANY, in which a young Turkish woman is kept as a prisoner in a small Hamburg apartment by her abusive, paranoid husband (who is also Turkish). The current film takes up where the first one ends. Elif has murdered her husband, and is relocated from her "apartment prison" to a women's prison, courtesy of the West German federal government.
Elif is placed in pre-trial detention, sort of a solitary confinement, where she suffers severe emotional trauma. There are flashbacks to her past, and she thinks often of her children. She doesn't speak German, and this isolates her even more.
Eventually she is tried and sentenced to six years. She is moved into a regular cell, and she slowly starts to adapt. She begins to learn German, and makes friends. There are two other Turkish women in the prison, but they shun Elif, so Elif's friends are all German. She even finds a man, a Turkish prisoner from the men's side of the prison, who sees her through the window at night.
Things start looking up for Elif; she starts to think of the future, of starting over with a new life in Germany, with her children. Then she learns that she is to be deported to Turkey, where she will be tried again, with a death sentence as the likely outcome. The story continues from this point.
On the positive side, the emotionalism underlying this film is very strong, and the performance by actress Zuhal Olcay as Elif is extremely good. On the negative side, the photography is poor: dark, and somewhat fuzzy at times. The emotions here are also a negative point. Sure Elif's husband was a lout, but this does not justify murder! She could have run away, or divorced him, or found some other solution.
The basic attitude of the film is a bit troubling. Here we have a woman who chose to murder her husband, and she is portrayed as a heroine! Even worse, she never shows regret or remorse of any kind for killing her husband. The picture of Elif that emerges is of a very troubled woman, one who has made wrong choices and is bearing the (severe) consequences. The problem is that this fact may not be noticed because the emphasis is on her suffering.
Finally, the film is very, very slow moving, especially the last half. Thus I would not recommend it to a general audience. Fans of melodrama might find it worthwhile though, particularly if you remember that the suffering she endures is the result of actions she chose to take.
Distribution: Part of "New Cinema from West Germany", a collection of recent German films, being presented in conjunction with The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Export Union des Deutschen Films, Munich [print source].
Reviewer contact: teb@stat.Berkeley.EDU
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