WETLANDS/ FEUCHGEBEITE

Germany, 2013, 105 minutes, Colour.
Carla Juri, Christoph Letkowski, Marlen Kruse.
Directed by David Wnendt.


This is a very confronting film, although many audiences found it amusing and funny.

The central character, Helen, is a complete narcissist, generally unaware of sensitivities towards others, even of her parents, her best friend, the nurse at the hospital. She is also completely obsessive, genitally and anally so. And the plot as well as the visuals illustrate this more than many audiences might want to see and hear.

At the film’s opening, Helen tells us that she is not particularly interested in hygiene, something which is very evident in what follows. With a scene on a dirty toilet seat, we are taken into the world of Helen’s obsessions. All bodily functions, all secretions and excretions make their appearance. Which will be fairly abhorrent to fastidious audiences. It is not a matter of being prudish, although there is quite an amount of nudity and sexual behaviour, but of personal interests and tastes. One of Melbourne’s chief film reviewers referred to the effect of the film as “endearing”. Others will find it repulsive. The reviewer suggested that this would become a cult film but referred to it as a favourite for adolescent audiences.

The film is based on a controversial bestseller,

Helen is a young adult, has been adversely affected by some of her parents’ behaviour, including her mother offering to catch her but letting her fall so that she would learn to trust no-one, even parents. Her mother continues to be an influence, embracing Catholicism at one stage, going to church, but having a number of men in her life. Her father has gone off on his own, is interested in younger women, as we see, but still visits his daughter. It is suggested that she has been somewhat traumatised in her relationship with her parents – which are shown in a number of flashbacks.

She comes across a young woman, becomes very friendly, explains her life to her, suggests that the friend behave somewhat similar fashion – which she does so with an excremental episode with her boyfriend – but actually becomes pregnant and wants to live more normally, much to Helen’s disdain.

Helen explains that she has haemorrhoids. She also injures herself in the anal area requiring hospitalisation and an operation. She clashes with the doctor, with the head nurse, but is friendly with a nurse, Robin, and discusses a lot of sexual matters with him – and - one doesn’t quite know how - he declares ultimately that he is in love with her.

There is more blood in the hospital as Helen injures herself in order to stay there. Which seems to indicate that she has something of a death wish exhibited in extreme manners of self-harm.

There would be different responses from women watching this film, with its female exposure and exposé, women identifying from the inside of the character with the male audience observing, comfortable or uncomfortable at such detail and in such close-up. There are many gross sequences as Helen certainly proves that she has no concern for hygiene, claiming that unhygienic behaviour has never harmed her, and some gross-out sequences such as men masturbating on a pizza.

This is a German film, perhaps with a German sensibility. At quite a full press preview, there was a great deal of laughter, sometimes in embarrassed disgust, but audiences perhaps feeling a sense of liberation as well as they watched and listen to Helen. There was some applause at the end.

Certainly different senses of humour and, more to the point, different tastes.