Foot fetishist Claude Petersdorf (Michael Maertens) sets some very strange things in motion in FINSTERWORLD
FINSTERWORLD (Frauke Finsterwald, 2013)
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St.
Monday, June 16, 9:30, and Tuesday, June 17, 4:00 & 9:30
Festival continues through June 19
212-255-2243
www.kinofestivalnyc.com
www.finsterworld.de
Journalist and documentarian Frauke Finsterwalder’s twisted and dark feature-length fiction debut, Finsterworld, paints a rather unflattering portrait of a modern-day Germany still haunted by World War II. Written by Finsterwalder (Die große Pyramide, Weil der Mensch ein Mensch ist) and her author husband, Christian Kracht, the black comedy follows a dozen interrelated characters, each with his or her own personal hang-ups and fetishes, as they go through one very wild and crazy day. Claude Petersdorf (Michael Maertens) is a pedicurist who has an unnatural desire for the feet of Frau Sandberg (Margit Carstensen), a wheelchair-bound resident of an old age home. Her son, Georg Sandberg (Bernhard Schütz), and his wife, Inga (Corinna Harfouch), are a wealthy, self-obsessed couple who are embarrassed to be Germans. Their son, Maximilian (Jakub Gierszał), is a spoiled brat who, with his best friend, Jonas (Max Pellny), bullies quirky-nerdy fellow students Natalie (Carla Juri) and Dominik (Leonard Scheicher) during a class trip to a concentration camp led by teacher Lehrer Nickel (Christoph Bach), who thinks the kids can actually learn something from the sins of the past. Tom (Ronald Zehrfeld) is a cop who likes to put on a different kind of uniform at times — he’s a closet Furry. Tom’s girlfriend, Franziska Feldenhoven (Sandra Hüller), is a frustrated documentary filmmaker stuck with a boring subject. And Einsiedler (Johannes Krisch) is a hermit who captures and cares for a forest raven. Various odd actions intersect, bringing the diverse cast of characters together in strange, ultimately dangerous ways as they all keep picking at their scabs, both physical and psychological.
Natalie (Carla Juri) makes an inopportune deal with Maximilian (Jakub Gierszał) in Frauke Finsterwalder’s insightful dark comedy
Finsterwalder bookends Finsterworld with Cat Stevens’s “The Wind,” in which the folkie who changed his name to Yusuf Islam sings, “I swam upon the devil’s lake / But never never never never / I’ll never make the same mistake / No, never never never,” but in Finsterwalder’s bleak yet complex vision of contemporary Germany, every generation is doomed to repeat those mistakes, in one way or another. The award-winning film will be making its East Coast premiere June 16-17 at the Quad as part of the Kino! Festival of German Films, with Finsterwalder on hand to talk about the wonderfully paced, beautifully photographed work. In addition, she and Kracht will be at NYU’s Deutches Haus on June 17 at 6:30 for the discussion “Finsterworld: From Script to Screen,” moderated by teacher and journal editor Eric Jarosinski (free with advance RSVP). Kino! continues through June 19 with such other films as Sabine Lidl’s Nan Goldin — I Remember Your Face, Noël Dernesch and Moritz Springer’s Journey to Jah, Denis Dercourt’s A Pact, and Maximilian Erlenwein’s Stereo.
Canadian-born director James Cameron (The Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, and some movie about a big sinking ship) crafts an expensive, high-tech apology to native people the world over in the futuristic adventure thriller Avatar. Borrowing elements from such films as The Matrix, Alien, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Star Wars saga, Disney’s animated Pocohantas, Reign of Fire, and many a cowboy-and-Indian tale, Cameron propels audiences into 2154, where a team of scientists join up with military troops on Pandora, home to the invaluable mineral unobtainium as well as a native race known alternately as the na’vi, or the People. In the middle of it all is Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a wheelchair-bound former Marine who takes the place of his brilliant brother, who was recently murdered. While head researcher Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) thinks bringing Jake on board is a mistake, Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) sees it as an opportunity to make use of Jake’s expert reconnaissance skills, so Jake takes over what would have been his brother’s avatar — a giant creation modeled after the na’vi that humans can operate from a pod while asleep and that gives Jake the opportunity to walk again through this tall blue being. Quaritch secretly promises Jake that he will get him the costly procedure that will give him back the use of his real legs if he infiltrates the na’vi and sends intel back to the colonel as the military prepares an all-out assault on the People, but when Jake falls for the beautiful Neytiri (Zoë Saldaña), he undergoes a change of heart. As with most Cameron films, the visual splendor is thwarted by a tired, clichéd script that devolves into complete silliness in the last half hour, spurred on by James Horner’s treacly score and plenty of poorly delivered lines. But Avatar is still lots of stupid fun, especially if you see it in 3D, which is how it’s being shown June 15 at the Museum of the Moving Image as part of the “See It Big! Science Fiction (Part Two)” series, which continues through July 12 with such other sci-fi flicks as Cameron’s The Abyss and The Terminator, Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Robert Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still. 
After being spurned by their aristocrat family and watching the wealthy D’Ascoynes turn their back on his mother even in death, Louis Mazzini (Dennis Price) decides that he is not going to let them get away with such awful treatment. So Louis, the tenth Duke of Chalfont, comes up with a plot to get rid of the eight D’Ascoynes standing between him and the dukedom. In Robert Hamer’s wickedly funny black comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets, each one of those haughty D’Ascoynes is played by Alec Guinness, young and old, male and female, to deservedly great acclaim. The film is told in flashback as an elegant, distinguished Louis is writing his memoirs in prison on the eve of his execution. He eloquently describes the details of his multiple murders, as well as his unending yearning for the questionably prim and proper Sibella (Joan Greenwood), who continues her flirtations with him even after she marries Louis’s former schoolmate Lionel (John Penrose), as well as his relationship with Edith (Valerie Hobson), the wife of one of the D’Ascoynes he kills on his march to power, glory, and revenge. But his hubris leads to his downfall — and one of the most delicious twist endings in film history. Based on Roy Horniman’s 1907 novel, Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal, and adapted by Hamer (The Spider and the Fly, School for Scoundrels) and cowriter John Dighton (The Barretts of Wimpole Street), Kind Hearts and Coronets takes on British high society, class conflict, royalty, and hypocrisy with a brash dose of cynical humor and more than a hint of eroticism, pushing the sexual envelope amid all the laughter. Price is terrific as the dapper Louis, but it’s impossible to steal the show from Guinness, who is a riot as the succession of doomed D’Ascoynes. Guinness was originally asked to play four of the roles but suggested that he do them all, and thankfully Ealing Studios agreed; one of the key shots in the film is when six of the D’Ascoynes are seen together. Kind Hearts and Coronets, which was turned into the Tony-winning musical 
