The Pharmacist

Wow! This is the first time I find that a movie and the book it is based upon perfectly complement one another. I read Ingrid Noll's novel and I liked it but something disturbed me. Now I know what it is. The book had an unnecessary feminist undertone, it tried to demonstrate female power a bit too explicitly.

By leaving out the frame story with the old woman in hospital whom Hella tells her story to, this undertone disappears in Rainer Kaufmann's excellent film version. The two guys, Levin and Dieter, are still the losers, of course, and Hella is the triumphant but that alone doesn't make her out to be some female heroine. I was able to see the same story from a completely different point of view: as nothing else but simply a dark, cruel crime drama, full of suspense and some humour, not unauthentic but still rather un-German (in fact, German humour is not exactly what Austrians like).

Romantic comedy star Katja Riemann may have been a complete failure but she gives quite a convincing performance. Jürgen Vogel overacts a little bit, but for Richy Müller the perfectly unlikeable prole Dieter could have been his best role ever.

I don't know whether the movie was released in the United States and if it was kind of successful, but I'd like to recommend it to everybody. I think even Americans who don't normally like European movies could enjoy it. Only if you get sick easily, you should at least look away once or twice. There are some really disgusting scenes.