Bagdad Café

I watched this because C.C.H. Pounder is one of my favorites. 1 minute in I thought...'why am I watching this?' Three minutes in I was so hooked I watched it twice. One of my favorite Jack Palance performances. Pounder is unbelievably good, and Marianne Sagebrecht is a marvel. The haunting score alone is worth the movie. Do yourself a big favor and ignore the FEW negative comments here and watch this movie. Try to forget big efx, car chase, alien films for a couple of hours and you won't be disappointed.

A wonderful, funny, odd, and unique film.

Strong acting all around (Jack Palance is amazing). Inventive use of distorted colors and changing camera speeds. A few moments get a bit precious, but generally one of the best uses I've seen of a slightly surreal style to tell a very touching, human story - an overweight, depressed Bavarian housewife is left stranded in the southwest desert by her husband, and slowly finds herself, and a home among the odd characters who live and work at the Bagdad Cafe.

This is a case where brave film-making enhances rather than distracts from emotional involvement. The basic theme (we're all weird, and we all need somewhere to fit in) is nothing new, but the approach here makes it delightful and fresh.

The original 15 minute longer 'director's cut' available on European DVDs does add some nice details, moments and filling out of characters. The film works fine in its shorter US version, and the Italian DVD of the director's cut I got was frustrating in that it had a a weaker visual transfer than the US DVD, and there were Italian subtitles you couldn't turn off, but I was glad to see it, and overall it's an even stronger film with the original material added back in.

In a world where (some) men just escape and hide, and women go ahead and start everything anew, any place becomes a good place to give new lymph to one's life: change lies in everyone's will to make it happen, and history teaches that women are far better than men in this. The director (a man!) of "Out of Rosenheim" (better known as "Bagdad Cafè") proves this simple truth very clearly and honestly.

In my still in progress search for on the road movies I bumped into this curious piece of cinema, not a road picture properly, since no physical journey happens, but certainly more than an inner journey develops. It involves the lives of some odd characters, especially Jasmin and Brenda whose lives, so distant but so similar, come to meet at the Bagdad Café, located on a "desert road from Vegas to nowhere" (quotation from the wonderful leading song "Calling you"). At the beginning it is a shabby, dirty, anonymous place, where people only pass by, run by a hysterical and melancholic Brenda, whose encounter with the impeccable "deutsche" Jasmin will turn the cafè into an amusing and happy place and will renew both lives radically. They will become friends, besides suspicion and fear, by teaching mutually how to enjoy life again. And it will turn out very difficult, almost impossible, to leave this magic place.

The cast is outstanding, the two female protagonists are perfect in their parts, but also Jack Palance, with his mixture of past glory and present melancholy, leaves the mark.The very good photography (some settings captured at sunset are really effective), together with the deeply involving and enigmatic music contribute to a significant emotional impact on the viewer, and also some very funny moments are to be enjoyed. A truly worth seeing picture.

I sat down and watched this in a rather distressed state having had a trying day. After a few minutes into the film my mood changed as I became immersed into this strange tale of a harassed owner of a cafe in the middle of nowhere and a tourist from Germany. The owner of the cafe brilliantly played by CCH Pounder is just as bemused as we are why this German tourist delightfully played by Marianne Sagebrecht wants to stay at her cafe. This is a wonderfully unpredictable film never going where most films would go. It's utterly charming and I only got distressed again when I realised it was about to end! (9/10)

A overweight German tourist is dumped in the middle of nowhere by her angry husband and puts in motion a set of unlikely comic and touching events.

Here in the Internet age we can do a lot of good work digging up and re-appraising films that deserve to be seen. While this is film might not to be everyone's taste it is a wonderful light drama about people of no particular importance doing very little beyond learning about each other.

Yet it works so well and haunts you for days after seeing it.

For reasons I also can't explain I find the American hinterlands strangely poetic and underused. Films such as Paris, Texas and The Last Picture Show also used these regions effectively.

More than any other film I have seen it cannot really be explained in words. It is about atmosphere and delivery and superb acting for a cast of - mostly - unknowns. It doesn't really have a plot as such and merely lingers in small-town America and observes small town mores and manners with cold detachment.

A little gem.