As all of the Flare viewing this year is online, I have been playing catch-up with all of the titles available. Today's post centres on the personal and creative lives of two twentieth century European icons: artist/writer Tove Jansson and auteur Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
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I count myself as someone who has never read the Moomins series that made Jansson's name. Yet, her life fascinates me, having viewed a documentary many years ago formed from her home movies. So, I knew a bit about her later life living on a remote island but nothing of her earlier years. Tove, a biopic by Zaida Bergroth, picks up Jansson's story as WWII is coming to an end and she is suffocating living at home with her parents. Striking out on her own to set up her own live-work studio in Helsinki, she embarks on a life as a visual artist and bohemian. And how. Within the first twenty minutes of the film she has taken as her lovers not only an MP but the daughter of the mayor! Everybody appears to be married, but also playing around. Honestly, the Bloomsbury crowd had nothing on the Helsinki set. It is a beautifully crafted drama of a woman seeking creative and personal satisfaction and giving not a jot about convention.
As its title makes clear, Oskar Roehler's Enfant Terrible offers a view of filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder as a drama queen creating chaos wherever he goes. Fassbinder's creativity was prodigious, fuelled by drink and drugs and his sexual appetite was equally active. During the film, which spans 1967-1982, he collects a crew of hangers-on and lovers who appear to be dedicated to him and his films, returning again and again. Why is not clear. He is rude, obnoxious, arrogant, insensitive and prone to throwing violent tantrums. Were his films that good? I don't buy the whole tortured genius as an excuse for wretched behaviour, but the film offers a vision of Fassbinder as performer on his own stage. In the title role Oliver Masucci is outstanding, conveying Fassbinder's aggression coupled with hints of vulnerability and fear.
For those wanting to delve into Fassbinder's back catalogue the BFI Player is offering a selection of his work. Drama guaranteed.
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