THE NASTY GIRL
A film review by Myra VanInwegen
Copyright 1991 Myra VanInwegen
Extremely brief assessment:
This is one of the best movies I've seen - as good as (just to name a few of my semi-recent picks) CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS or Imamura's BLACK RAIN. It is the only movie I have ever seen that has a heroine whom I would very much like to be, or to try to imitate.
Basic plot (no spoilers, unless you think any plot description is a spoiler):
This movie tells the story of Sonya, a girl whose intelligence and willfulness make her hard to control. However, despite the title of the movie, she is a very nice girl, a good girl, who excels in her classes and is the pride of the town. That is, as long as the town's definition of "good" matches her own.
This movie is really two films in one. The first part is wonderfully light and funny, recounting the mishaps of a girl growing up in a Catholic family in a small town in Bavaria. The other part begins as she starts doing research for an essay on "My Hometown During the Third Reich." The film rapidly grows serious, and the humor of the first half is replaced by frustration, hatred, and even danger as the film progresses.
Technical notes (you might want to skip this if you want to be surprised by the structure of the film):
The film is told as sort of a flashback, with the present-day Sonya narrating. Color, or the lack of it, is used to show time periods here. Black-and-white is used for Sonya's childhood, color for the present, and, in one brief sequence, sepia for "way back when." If I remember right, the film turns from b&w (the past) to color (the present) about when the Third Reich essay is announced, that is, when the film changes mood from funny to serious. This marks the transition from childhood to adulthood for Sonya.
The sets used when Sonya is dealing with the "establishment" - the locals who continually try to thwart her - use a minimum of furniture (a desk, a chair) with a painting or slide behind to suggest the rest of room in which the action takes place. Perhaps this suggests the illusions on which these people have based their power.
All in all, this is an excellent film. See it.
-Myra
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