The Berlin Affair (1985)

User Rating:

4.9/10   

Director:

Liliana Cavani

Writers:

Liliana Cavani (writer)
Roberta Mazzoni (writer)

Release Date:

October 1985 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

Set in 1938 Berlin, Louise Von Hollendorf is the wife of a young Nazi diplomat who meets and falls in love with a certain Mitsuko Matsugae...

Plot Keywords:

Nazi | Suicide Pact | Ménage À Trois | Stockings | Foreign Language Adaptation

Awards:

1 win & 1 nomination

Cast

Gudrun Landgrebe	...	Louise von Hollendorf
Kevin McNally	...	Heinz von Hollendorf
Mio Takaki	...	Mitsuko Matsugae
Hanns Zischler	...	Wolf von Hollendorf
Massimo Girotti	...	Werner von Heiden
Philippe Leroy	...	Herbert Gessler
William Berger	...	The Professor
Andrea Prodan	...	Joseph Benno
Tomoko Tanaka	...	Ume
Claudio Lorimer	...	Otto Bhuler
Edward Farrelly	...	Bernard
John Steiner	...	Oskar Engelhart
Enrica Maria Scrivano	...	Lotte Engelhart
Clara Algranti	...	Ilse
Benedetta Fantoli	...	Concierge

Also Known As:

Interno berlinese (Italy)
Leidenschaften (West Germany)

Runtime:

France:110 min | Italy:118 min | USA:96 min | Finland:122 min (1986)

Country:

Italy | West Germany

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Belgium:16 (video rating) | Australia:M | Finland:K-16 | France:-12 | USA:R | West Germany:16 | Iceland:16

Filming Locations:

Munich, Bavaria, Germany

Company:

Italian International Film

Among the worst cinematic nonsense I've ever seen.

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.