“My stars have uncrossed.”

In the film, Forever Lulu, Elaine (Hanna Schygulla) works for a toilet seat company by day and writes scripts for adult films by night. But what she really wants to do is to write a serious novel. Things go from bad to worse when she’s fired, receives an eviction notice, and her agent tells her to re-write her novel to make it more sensationalistic. Just as things hit rock bottom, Elaine’s life changes when a smartly dressed couple mistake Elaine for a mugger and hand over their valuables. Soon Elaine is being stalked by a Mafia hit man and surrounded by dead bodies.

The plot is, obviously, far-fetched. Normally, this sort of thing might be carried off if it contained great comic performances. Unfortunately Forever Lulu is cursed with cliched lines and uneven performances. Some of the roles are surprisingly good–the snotty waiter, for example. And the role of Elaine’s blind date, the obnoxious life insurance salesman, is a gem. Other performances are simply bad. Hanna Schygulla is a fine German actress, and Deborah Harry (from Blondie) has managed to deliver some good performances in the past too. Deborah Harry stars as the elusive and mysterious Lulu in this film. This role doesn’t call for many lines–just a few appearances, and the few lines Harry has aren’t very exciting. Schygulla and Harry–in spite of their talents–just can’t drag this film anywhere. All in all, Forever Lulu tries hard–perhaps too hard–but it’s just not an interesting, original or funny film.

“I’m only doing my duty.”

A man travels back to his small hometown in Germany after an absence of 40 years. With his teenage son in tow, his goal is to piece together exactly what happened to his mother during WWII. As he tries to talk to villagers and discover the truth, a story unfolds of a tragic love affair between the man’s German mother and a Polish prisoner of war. Their fate becomes the focus of the film, A Love in Germany.

Through flashbacks, the story unfolds of Paulina Kropp (Hanna Schygulla) who runs a small grocery shop while her husband serves in the German army. The villagers use incarcerated Polish prisoners-of-war for unpaid labour. The POWs are subject to strict rules–they are not supposed to live, eat or fraternize with the Germans. Polish POW Stanislaus (Piotr Lysak) sleeps in the stables, and he’s ‘loaned’ out for various tasks. Stanislaus begins doing work for Paulina, and they engage in a steamy affair. In the village, it’s impossible to keep anything secret–and soon the affair is common knowledge.

While A Love in Germany from director Andrzej Wajda is ostensibly the story of a love affair between two people who were supposed to be enemies, the film is much more than that. By retelling the affair, the film subtly examines Germany’s past. When the forbidden affair inevitably comes to the attention of the authorities, ordinary German citizens become involved with irrevocable decisions. What should be an intimate, private matter between two people is dissected, analyzed, and judged according to rules and regulations set forth by Himmler. The question of the “Ayran-ness” of Paulina and Stanislaus will help decide their fate, and neighbours, friends and acquaintances collaborate in a sick system. The fine actor, Armin Mueller-Stahl plays Mayer, a German officer who is out of his moral depth, but consoles himself by following the minutiae set forth in documents regarding interracial couples. Mayer’s underling, Schutze, is a petty bureaucrat given the authority and the uniform of a monstrous system. Based on the novel by Rolf Hochhuth, this excellent film is in Polish with English subtitles.