Bettina Stucky (pronounced like "Shtoukee") is a known unknown in Switzerland as well as abroad. A singer and a stage-actress by training, a member of the highly praised ensemble of Christoph Marthaler, she works mostly outside of Switzerland (since the prophet in his own land does not count at all, as a German proverb correctly states). She had a few minor and major roles in movies as well, but in "Meier Marilyn", she can pull all her stops, and she does really so. No other living Swiss actress is a patch on her, and this is the reason why I am happy, that this movie, that was not even shown in Swiss cinemas, but only broadcast in TV, is available on international DVD.
However, Bettina Stucky goes beyond performing her marvelous role: She is a tremendously attractive big woman and gives a vivid impression what escapes all those men who are focused on slim ones. She portrays Marilyn Meier, an "overweight" hairdresser (the marks are purposely set, since the term between them is actually mistaken from an aesthetic point of view) in a typical Swiss town called Mittelbach, situated somewhere in the fiendish gray-zone between the cantons of Zurich and Argovia. Marilyn does not really like her job. Her boyfriend, the mayor of the town, is a married man who keeps promising her to divorce from his wife, but actually does not mean it. He just prefers the enchantment of having a big woman in bed, but favors his skinny wife to show up in public. As usual, nothing changes in Switzerland, until a Turkish server shows up who is also a musician. Unfortunately, he is gay, but he is also able to convince Marilyn that she has a beautiful voice. By aid of music producer Chasper Senn (who by his Rhetoromanche first name is shown as a "foreigner" in the little town, too), both get an invitation to the famous TV-show "Music With Heart", where Marilyn sings her unforgettable "Los uf dini inner Stimm" ("Listen to your inner voice"). The most lovely irony of this movie reaches a climax when Peter Schellenberg, the real (now former) TV-director of Switzerland, shows up in the movie.
"Meier Marilyn" is a thorough Swiss movie, in what it shows as well as in the manner how this is shown. Switzerland has a good tradition of autochthonous film-production that goes back at least to Kurt Früh's movies in the 50ies, but they never got to be acclaimed outside of the Swiss borders. The Swiss dialect should not be an obstacle, at least not in its Bernese version that has never sounded lovelier than in Bettina Stucky's original dialect. It is good to have this movie for an international audience in a time where American movies are predominant in Switzerland and several of the few Swiss home-productions are mere copies from Hollywood-style movies. If somebody in Switzerland has the womanpower to awake the Swiss movie industry out of her Sleeping-Beauty sleep to international grandeur, it will be the great, big and beautiful Bettina Stucky.
