The Unpolished

What at first could be seen as an exercise in visceral coming of age style/form -- transcends its usual structure and overarching style with extreme wit, scenes of truthful observation, fine and natural performance and occasional bursts of unexpected fantasy.

An average director could have made this story less than riveting, but in the hands of talented newcomer Pia Marais, we are left with something brutally hilarious, alienating and tender. Never sentimental.

The casting is superb. Textured faces and unexpected choices. They drift across the kinetic editing style like ghostly apparitions unaware of the camera's close proximity.

Best German feature I have seen in the last few years.

Just saw this at the Sydney Film Festival. Awful just awful! I have absolutely no idea how this film won any awards. The acting wasn't too bad, Birol Ünel who played Axel and Georg Friedrich who played the long haired Ingmar deserve special mention. But Ceci Schmitz-Chuh who played the central character Stevie was wooden and lacking in sympathy. But given how bad the script must have been, it's no surprise.

The film jumped from scene to scene, with no explanation what had happened and where we were now. It was like having anterograde amnesia. The audience kept looking around at one another wondering if they were the only ones who had missed something.

My partner counted four times that the camera could be seen in windows and mirror, the music was jarring and the whole thing dragged. I started looking forlornly at the aisle about half an hour in. Some lucky buggers left! The moment it ended there was a stampede to get out of the theatre with my partner demanding I give him back the hour and half of his life back. I felt the same way.

"Unpolished", a snapshot from a 14 year old girls' troubled childhood, is based on a true story. Writer-director Pia Marais has drawn heavily on her own experience of growing up in troubled times: "My parents' chaotic life was a major source of inspiration for this movie". As a result, her movie is as touching as it is personal. Yet it is also strikingly similar to Christian Petzold's "The state I am in" (2001). While Marais' lead character Stevie (Ceci Chuh) is raised by a marauding gang of flower power slackers, Petzold's Jeanne (Julia Hummer) is going from town to town with her fugitive terrorist parents. But from the girls' point of view, it doesn't make a big difference that Stevie's family gives peace a chance while Jeanne's parents are blowing up the neighborhood. What matters to them is that they are their parents' second priority at best. When the very people you look to for good sense and guidance have their heads in the clouds, you end up feeling you have nowhere left to run. Outstanding performances by screen débutante Ceci Shuh as Stevie, Pascale Schiller as her hapless mother, and Birol Ünel as her drug-smuggling father.