Word: verhoeven
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...NASTY GIRL. A Bavarian schoolgirl starts poking into her hometown's Nazi past and becomes the local scourge. Michael Verhoeven turns social satire into exhilarating comedy. And Lena Stolze is a perky paradigm for young Germans unafraid of old demons...
...Verhoeven could have made a straightforward documentary on the subject; in fact he did, as a companion piece to The Nasty Girl. But in this movie he dresses fact up as fable. Passau becomes Pfilzing, and Anja Rosmus is now Sonja Rosenberger, a precocious sprite full of life and full of herself. The movie takes its spirit from Sonja; it is bold, nettlesome and great...
...Verhoeven zips through his tangled story with all the brio of Brecht on a sunny day; his style is comic, ironic, daringly distanced. The girlhood scenes are played for easygoing farce and shot in black and white. Then the film bursts into snapshot color when Sonja falls in love with her teacher (Robert Giggenbach). Her hometown's streets and churches are stylized back projections. The Nasty Girl moves like an eccentric dancer, ever shifting its pace and mood, never losing its poise...
Lena Stolze made her film debut nine years ago as a student opposing Hitler in Verhoeven's The White Rose. As Sonja she is greatly winning, and the film bathes in her saucy radiance. She whistles when Sonja is happy, and when the crusade finally turns her way, she can't repress an exuberant yodel. Sonja wants to be Joan of Arc, but she's really Nancy Drew, doggedly sleuthing until she cracks a dark mystery. She can tolerate everything -- the aged Reichmongers cloaked in propriety, the goons who threaten her children -- everything but acceptance. When the town finally acknowledges...
...Verhoeven, this chipper satire may be part autobiography; his father Paul directed movies -- operettas, mostly -- during the Nazi era. So The Nasty Girl has perhaps allowed a gifted filmmaker to shake and break the bones of a family skeleton as well as a national one. German moviegoers have taken The Nasty Girl as if it were good medicine; they have made it a big homeland hit. But to Americans, the dose will taste like sugar candy with magical nutrients. Rarely does a history lesson evoke a 95-minute smile. This one does...