Quadruplex

15 year old Sophie escapes from an orphanage to get away from the authoritarian rule of the nuns who run it. On the street she doesn't find freedom but a pimp who picks her up and makes her a prostitute.

Visually the movie goes beyond the limits. One explicitly shown rape scene follows the other. Sophie's body is dragged around, beaten, raped and dragged around again. You get only a view glimpses on her personality hidden behind that surface.

The movie swims on the sexploitation wave that flooded German cinema in the late 60s but it goes beyond a cheap arousement. It's comparable to Ulrike Meinhof's "Bambule", that shows the fate of runaway girls forced into sex work. Meinhof's movie was on TV in May 1970. A few months later Meinhof joined the RAF terror group to fight a society that produced fates like Sophie's. The end of this movie might be seen as a comment on this development. It deliverers for sure the "and storm break loose" urge for violence that overshared German history in the decade to come.

Set in the "German Autumn" of 1977 the movie tries to confront the supernatural horror of "Suspira" with the earthly horror of the RAF terror. But like the psychoanalyst Dr. Klemperer (Tilda Swindon) who is not able to help his patient Patricia the director fails to give some analytical insight in the nature of horror itself. We get some well composed pictures, a moody light and some good acting but the director missed his target. He has studied the history of the Italian cinema exploiting and dismembering the human body. But while those cheaply produced pictures often gave some insight in the nature of horror, terror and fascist politics this movie is just set in a gloomy Berlin struggling with its Nazi-past, the wall and a leftist terror group. It was not a happy time that message is delivered but unlike many delTorro movies it fails to mirror the horror of reality with the horror of the spiritual world - well unless you take mirror literally.

The show has a terrific cast of actors known from Rome, GOT and other highly acclaimed series. The sets are as impressing as the mood they convey. But the show doesn't tell the real story of the expedition: A story of white men's arrogance and failure in the realm of the arctic nature. Instead the writers stick to elements of poorly executed fantasy. Instead of using the talents of their actors to tell the story how the crew of two ships of the Royals Navy turned into a bunch of hopeless people roaming through a nowhere of snow and ice they turned the show into a not so thrilling hunt for a monster. I hope the show will find a better course in the remaining episodes of the first season.