This is a fantastic documentary. Three 15 y/o girls from similar "patch work family" backgrounds have to find their way through puberty and the challenges of their Berlin borough Kreuzberg 36, known for its low income and high migrant population. Especially Klara's fate is interesting, clearly allowing us to see that children need guidance, authority and in general a father figure in their lives. The language might be shocking at times, but this is authentic language, authentic consumption of alcohol and drugs. Even though the girls still have a chance to make it, it becomes obvious that at least two of them could still fail. The music is fantastic, mostly German subculture sounds, hip hops, rock, but perhaps not what the kids listen to, but that's OK. In a way it is even better than Raising Victor Vargas since it is not staged.
Reviews
2 Reviews
Wet Asphalt
(1958)
DVD version badly subtitled
12 June 2008
An amazing indictment of falsifying news stories and twisting the truth. Eeerily foreshadowing the 2003 New York Times scandal focusing on Jayson Blair who was fired after he was caught plagiarizing and fabricating elements of his stories. The film dialogues contain a lot of humor and fast paced, generally good to follow. Gert Fröbe and an excellent Marti Held create relatively multidimensional characters, in addition to Horst Buchholz's main character. Even though the latest dubbed version is (obvioulsy) in English, the subtitles contain one important recurring error: The town they talk about is Gdingen, a former German town in 1958 Poland. The subtitles, however, keep referring to Goettingen, which is confusing at best, but in the plot it is completely nonsensical. I would withdraw the DVD and redo the subtitles and replace them free of charge. Other than that the plot is nicely developed and another example of Frank Wisbar's talent. Wisbar had only come home from the US a few years earlier and would one year later make "Nacht fiel über Gotenhafen" in which he described the plight of refugees from former Polish territories from where he was from as well.
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