Berlin Affair

It's simply one of the best darkest movie I've ever seen in my life. Very well told story. And the performance of Mio Takaki (Mitsuko Matsugae) is just exceptional. Perhaps is what Liliana Calvani use to do when she makes any film: to put her particular seal in each of them. And she put a huge one in "The Berlin Affair". Excellent!

In 1938, in Berlin, Louise von Hollendorf (Gudrun Landgrebe) is a well married woman frequenting art classes. Her husband Heinz von Hollendorf (Kevin McNally) is a successful politician in a pre-war German and they have an excellent relationship. During the class, Louise meets Mitsuko Matsugae (Mio Takaki), an exotica and very discreet Japanese young woman, daughter of the Ambassador of Japan in Berlin. They start a friendship that is followed by a lesbian love between them. Mitsuko indeed is a very seductive and amoral bisexual woman and seduces also Heinz. This relationship ends in a tragedy.

This dark and heavy romance has a wonderful photography, and a beautiful reconstitution of a pre-war period. The cast has a great performance and this movie is really very underrated, maybe because of the polemical and excellent director Liliana Cavani. She had the courage of making the magnificent 'Night Porter', which offended many persons, and since them certain cinema critics have decided to crucifixe her work. The manipulated public opinion, based on these unfair critics, sometimes is induced to 'not-like' any of her films. 'Berlin Affair' is a film not recommended for all audience. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): 'Berlin Affair'

Note: On 02 August 2021, I saw this film again.

It has long been fashionable in critical circles to bash the films of Liliana Cavani. Her films tend to show sleazy low life characters---------even when they live in palatial mansions. Her controversial NIGHT PORTER was unjustly accused of being deplorable, and insult to the intelligence of the average moviegoer, an offense to Jews and women, and generally condemned by everyone of cinematic importance. For me, she is the modern purveyor of film noir at it's darkest.

THE BERLIN AFFAIR tells the story of Mitsuko, daughter of the Japanese ambassador to Germany during the Nazi era. She is publicly quiet and demure, but in private, flamboyantly bisexual and seduces the wife of a high Nazi official-------and eventually the husband himself. This leads to a rather unusual ménage a trois with each member of the triangle becoming more and more jealous of the others. Eventually, this self-destructive relationship becomes harder and harder to resist in spite of the personal dangers to the individuals and their respective families and political causes.

It would be easy to dismiss this film as another sleazy sex opera from Cavani. But a great deal is going on in this film---------politically, sexually, socially, racially and artistically. There is a definite message for those willing to see it-------and it would be more fun for each viewer to find it for himself. Ignore Leonard Maltin's opinion and decide for yourself.

I purchased this DVD because of its German star, the beautiful and soft-spoken Gudrun Landgrebe, who portrayed a tender and warm-hearted young woman so convincingly in the German TV series "Heimat". In the German version of this movie, she dubs her own part with near perfection and makes all the right faces all the time, but is condemned to play the silliest society woman one may ever encounter on the proverbial celluloid: falling "lesbianly" (so to speak) for a sour-faced, lying and manipulative Japanese woman, even though she is happily married to a successful diplomat in the German government. After the viewer becomes convinced to have seen the peak of cinematic stupidity, he is in for yet further astonishment when said happily married diplomat too falls for the Japanese and, in this state, becomes even jealous of his wife. Now, this male reviewer may not be able to judge correctly the authenticity of a lesbian infatuation, but he can assert that, as a man's sex object, the Japanese is so low on the totem pole to be below ground. Those fake sexual encounters, during which the participants never shed any of their clothing, do not exactly contribute to the credibility of the story either. Only Gudrun's 1930's Mercedes looks genuine.

This film certainly has many flows, probably in the terms of script, but it definitely falls into the category of cinematic classics. If we celebrate The Night Portrait, or The Last Tango in Paris, than we should celebrate this movie, too. The performances of the two main female leads are marvelous. Passion, forbidden love, irresistible attraction to the unknown and potentially deadly field - all this makes this film unique. The script is somewhat weak - but it definitely is not what this film is worth for. In the first place, long shots without a word between characters - this is what makes this film unique. Definitely worth seeing.