 |
| Plot Synopsis A young woman finds herself becoming obsessed with a violently disturbed man in this gruesome thriller inspired by actual events. Katie Armstrong (Keri Russell) is an American college student who is majoring in criminal psychology while studying abroad in Germany. Needing to explore a notorious murder case for a class project, Armstrong begins looking into the life and crimes of Oliver Hartwin (Thomas Kretschmann), who had been convicted of murder after killing and eating another man. Hartwin's crime was unusual in that he posted a message in an internet chat room asking for a male volunteer between the ages of 21 and 40 who would be willing to be murdered and cannibalized afterwards. While Hartwin did find a man willing to die and be eaten, this did not make matters safe or simple for the German cannibal. As Armstrong digs deeper into the horrible facts of Hartwin's crimes, she finds her reserve beginning to crack as she can no longer control her feelings about the killer. Also shown under the titles Grimm Love and Rohtenburg, Butterfly: A Grimm Love Story was inspired by the true story of Armin Meiwes, who was convicted of the 2001 death of a man he killed and partially ate who he met through a posting on the internet, in which he asked for a volunteer willing to be slaughtered. - Mark Deming, All Movie Guide Reviews Scott Weinberg Cinematical Indie Posted Mar 19th 2007 1:01PM by You've probably heard something about the story by now: In early 2001 a German man was arrested for killing, disemboweling, cooking and eating another man. What makes this story particularly (ok, especially) bizarre is that the victim was a willing participant in the event! He actually wanted to be eaten! Obviously a story like this is entirely ripe for a movie adaptation, which is where Martin Weisz' Grimm Love (aka Rohtenburg or Butterfly: A Grimm Love Story) comes in. (Another film covering the exact same story, Marian Dara's Cannibal, is presently available on video. It's a lot more graphic, but not quite as engaging as Grimm Love.) "Based on actual events," but using a fictional character for a framing story, Grimm Love focuses on American graduate student Katie Armstrong (Keri Russell), a committed researcher who finds herself absolutely obsessed with the story of flesh-eater Oliver Hartwin (Thomas Kretschmann), a rather sick man who's doing jail time for dining on his fellow man. Given that we only know a few small snippets about Hartwin's life, Weisz cleverly juxtaposes Armstrong's story with early details from Hartwin's life. As Katie gets the sketchier stories about the killer's childhood, we're offered the anecdotes in flashback form, and as she gets a whole lot closer to the seriously slimy truth, the b-story material gets decidedly more ... icky. The whole (and admittedly languid) affair comes to a head with a powerfully compelling two-headed sequence: Katie gets to see the carnage on videotape as we switch back and forth to Hartwin's final descent. And it ain't pretty. Needless to say, Grimm Love is NOT for all tastes, nor is it a fast-paced or gruesomely amusing affair. Martin Weisz has mounted an austere and chillingly matter-of-fact piece of fact-based storytelling, and if the movie slows down to a crawl once or twice (and trust me, it does) then at least you have some lovely cinematography to feast your eyes upon. (Weisz' second feature, The Hills Have Eyes 2, hits theaters next week.) Say what you will about the tone, the subject matter, or the outrageously uncomfortable finale, but there's little denying that Grimm Love is a very well-made film. Even during the numerous lapses into semi-snooze territory, I was still more than invested enough in the story, and this is coming from a guy who already knew the end of the story before the movie even started. Ms. Russell continues to prove that she's much more than just another WB-style pretty face. Her performance anchors the whole film, and provides a welcome sense of humanity amidst such bleak themes and inhuman behavior. As the flesh-craving Hartwin, Thomas Krestchmann is really quite excellent. Never too frazzled or over-the-top, the German actor creates the creepiest kind of killer: The one who's completely normal on the surface ... until things get gooey, that is. I can plainly see why the fest-goers I saw Grimm Love with didn't care much for the movie: It moves slowly, there's not much in the plot department, and there's no sense of light or levity to keep spirits afloat -- but I suspect that Grimm Love came out precisely how Weisz wanted it to, and while I doubt I'll ever see the flick a second time, I've no problem recommending it to fans of dark and disturbing cinema. Mark Adnum Outrate.net Excessively cock-hungry Armin Meiwes is currently in a German jail for biting and cutting off Bernd Brandes' penis, frying it and serving it as a light meal for the both of them, before slaughtering Brandes, carving his body into choice cuts and storing them in the fridge. Before he was arrested Meiwes had eaten about 20kg of Brandes, who'd responded to Meiwes' cannibal website chatroom advertisements for a willing victim. Grimm Love - German title Rohtenburg, from the small town where the quasi-murder took place - is a turbid dramatisation has been banned in Germany but thankfully not in Australia, where it provided my viewing partner and I with numerous unintentional giggles and a nice tranquilising effect after our own lip-smacking feast of sausages and sauerkraut dinner at a Sydney schnitzel restaurant. Keri Russell (TV's "Felicity") plays Katie, an earnest American grad student doing her doctoral studies near Rohtenburg. Fascinated by cannibalism, she bites off more than she can chew when she decides to investigate the notorious local case. In the film, Armin Meiwes becomes Oliver Hartwin, played by Thomas Kretschmann, who was the stern captain of the "Venture" in Peter Jackson's King Kong. Thomas Huber playes the Bernd Brandes role, which has been made older and renamed "Simon Grombeck". The quietly disturbed Simon lives with the relatively cheery Felix (Markus Lucas) who has no suspicion that his porcine lover spends all his time on the net searching for someone to eat him alive, literally. The details of the real-life story may be shocking and bizarre, but the story itself is really quite neat and linear, concerning two people who have a very unique relationship that ends with a bang. Here, though, it becomes a tangled, constipated mess with nothing like the efficient narrative drive of Grimm's dark fairy tales, from where, presumably, the film takes its English title. Ludicrously simplistic Hannibal Rising-style attempts to link the men's indigestable psyches with textbook childhood traumas stall what little story flow there is and the casting of these flashbacks, which gives us two almost-identical young boys with matching blond neurotic mothers makes it difficult to distinguish whose backstory is whose. Russell's Katie provides totally superfluous voiceovers, sharing her inner dialogue and ever-changing reactions to the information she uncovers. In a movie about a middle-aged gay cannibal who eats his willing victim, I personally had no interest in hearing how the story was filtered by a cheery Gen-Next US chick doing a year's foreign exchange. Get rid of the entire role! Surely Felix, who is given nothing to do, would have been a far better narrator and this would have narrowed the focus down to an enticing love triangle, with a mystified Felix unravelling the story and detailing his more audience-relevant responses from the time he finds missing Simon's will. Russell's fan base, played to by Katie's 90210 gumshoe smarts, would have absolutely no interest in this grimy tale of gay psycho love. It really is impossible to work out what she's doing in the film. But the acting, even Russell's, is generally sound even if the actors are undermined by the dreadful script which treats its characters like random degustation menus where no short course has any relation to the next. Tittilating audiences with body parts frying in saucepans and so on is a futile attempt at sensationalism as we go in to the film prepared for scenes of cannibalism, scenes that the Silence of the Lambs series and the hysterical cleaver-whoosing antics of TV's "Iron Chef" have inured us to. Wasting time with Katie and one excruciatingly bad flashback after another, the film's first two acts tell us nothing about either of the two leads, and so we end up with a dimly lit finale where two guys we know nothing about agree to do incredibly strange things to each other for no apparent reason. Awards Festival de Cine de Sitges Best Director Best Actor (Thomas Kretschmann and Thomas Huber) Best Cinematography. Other Awards Melies d'Argent at the Luxembourg International Film Festival. Film Presented - Austin's SXSW Festival |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
 |
 |
| Grimm Love (Rohtenburg) 2006 - Germany - 89 min. - Feature - Color AKA - Grimm Love [2007], (Festival title) Rohtenberg Director - Martin Weisz |
| Genre / Type - Horror, Psychological Thriller Keywords - alienation, criminologist, homosexual, obsession, project [plan], psychopath, research, self-sacrifice, student, victim, study-abroad Themes - Haunted By the Past, Journey of Self-Discovery, Cannibals Tones - Lurid, Tense, Wintry, Macabre, Menacing, Disturbing Produced by - Atlantic Streamline Productions Released by - Senator Films Cast Keri Russell Thomas Kretschmann Thomas Huber Rainier Meissner Angelika Bartsch Alexander Martschewski Nils Dommning Markus Lucas Pascal Andres |
|
 |
 |