Zuckerbaby

Camryn Manheim held up the Emmy Award she won for her role as Ellenor Frutt on The Practice and said..."This is for all the fat girls!" This film liberates "fat girls" in a similar way. Marianne Sägebrecht is "Marianne" the mortician's assistant whose life is as dead as her customers. She rides to work on the subway, listens to the negative comments about her by ladies in the local shops, and takes an occasional swim at the local pool when she needs to just get away and think. All that changes the day she spots Huber, the young handsome subway driver. What chance would a fat middle aged mortician's assistant have of seducing a young handsome blonde man? Marianne proves that hope springs eternal. I enjoyed this film when it was played on Showtime in the late 1980's and I recently tracked down a copy to see it again.

Thsi is an excellent film. You will enjoy the ride, if you like sex, roll and subway stations: the plot is simple. A woman falls in for the train conductor while knowing that she is a fat, over-weight persona. Her aura is splendid though and the conductor falls in for the German: intriguing scenes include the calculus used for the regulations of the train: the workers inside calculations for the work, very difficile work, they do. The train conductor is a fit, young professional. The swimmer, the German, is an obsessed persona looking for sugar, hence the tittle -Sugarbaby-. This art movie, not to be confused with technical films of mental -Altered States- or mechanical reproduction, was made close to the end of the Cold War between the two Hemispheres: the West and the East. It was made in Germany but I am not certain which Germany - in any case there is a cameo of the infamous -Luxemburg- station, the second most reputed m'etro station in Europe. You will enjoy it.

The German 1984 comedy "Zuckerbaby" ("Sugarbaby") is the debut film of American director and German resident Percy Adlon who became famous with his following productions like like "Out of Rosenheim" (1987) and "Rosalie goes shopping" (1988), all of them featuring actress Marianne Saegebrecht. In this very sad, bleak but also very touching Bavarian comedy Saegebrecht plays a lonely, over-weight woman in the big city of Munich in her late thirties who works as an udertaker. Her life consist of her sad work, watching TV and eating loads of sweets and cakes. One day, she's falling in love with the voice of a subway driver (played by popular comedian Eisi Gulp), announcing the train stations. She stalking him until he falls in love with her, but their intense romance is only short-lived.

Together with Doris Doerrie's "Maenner" ("Men"), released the same year, "Zuckerbaby" was a blueprint for the very popular German movie genre of the "Beziehungskomoedien" (relationship comedies) in the eighties and nineties. It is shot in a typical colorful 1980's neon style, reflecting the bright lights and loneliness of modern life in the big cities. There are not much dialogues, and the real conversations only start with the beginning of the romance in the middle of the film. There is also a creepy, sad atmosphere of death, loneliness and the longing for love, but the movie works perfect as a human drama as well as a campy love comedy.

The actors are doing a great job, and the minimal harmonica tunes in the background are adding a great atmosphere to the picture. By the way, "Zuckerbaby" was a famous German Rock'n'Roll song from the fifties by Peter Kraus which is constantly played during the movie. If you want to watch one of the best German films of the eighties, "Zuckerbaby" is a good example to recommend.

...still, there's something about this movie that is extremely appealing. The strange, offbeat colors underscore the fantasy nature of the story. For the first twenty minutes or so, I just watched with wide-eyed disbelief, expecting something atrocious to happen; then as the story developed I found myself drawn into an unexpectedly tender and touching, yet still fantastic, affair. When the film was over, I found myself reflecting on the characters' motivations and personalities. Trivial films don't have that effect.

Not trivial, then--but not wonderful, either, in any conventional way. Too specialized? I don't know. I plan to watch it again. It's worth that.

I gave it a vote of "seven."

It's rather odd to start watching this film after reading the description of the main character as an "obese" woman, whose weight is supposed to define her. I mean, look at the film's poster. I suppose in 1985 it would have been unusual to see someone her size, but there are now people walking around who are twice her size, some of them even claiming to be "models", so it takes some steam out of the film's believability. In any case I was uncomfortable with the stalking aspect of the film...if the genders were reversed, this film would be suspense, not light comedy, so it's somehow funny if a woman stalks a man. Double standards? In any case, the film overall moves way too slowly to be interesting or engaging, scenes go on and on for far longer than they should. Boring.