Christiane F

Christiane F. (Christiane F.: Wir Kinder Vom Bahnhof Zoo) (1981)

Runtime: 131 minutes

Directed by: Uli Edel

Starring: Natja Brunckhorst, Thomas Haustein, Jens Kuphal, Rainer Woelk, Jan Georg Effler

From: Several different West German companies

In my first of two reviews posted tonight, I viewed quite the harsh but great movie: 

Well, this was a downer. I have known of Christiane F. for years but the lack of legal streaming availability in the United States meant that it was the Criterion Channel (the original German-language version, not an English dub that evidently is terrible AND out of sync) adding this to their platform last month which allowed me to finally check out one of the best movies out there in the category of “This is what will happen if you get addicted to heroin. Please don’t even try heroin!” Trainspotting had some moments seared into my brain but now I can say the same for this picture.

The picture is arguably even more horrifying than Trainspotting and Requiem for a Dream-this was based on a real-life girl, Christiane Felscherinow. She was a bored 13-year-old in West Berlin who did become addicted to heroin as an early teen. Christiane is a huge David Bowie fan who starts going to the fashionable Sound nightclub, wearing makeup to appear older. She befriends misfits who are drug addicts. The film takes its time so we get to know the titular character & her scenario before her first hit of H.

She uses pills and acid before that fateful moment, which was after a Bowie concert. He himself re-creates that moment, singing Station to Station at a concert. She is warned by junkies not to try it but because she wants to be closer to a boy… H is not romanticized in any way; users are appropriately strung out, dirty locations are visited, and there are unflinching looks at them shooting up & the acts they perform to afford the drug.

In the first 45 minutes, the mood is more fun as Bowie songs are heard-as they are from his albums when he lived in Berlin, meaning they are great tunes, likely underrated as they aren’t the ones you hear on retro stations. After that, the mood is much more somber. The cinematography is suitably bleak, appropriate for a movie where real-life junkies are seen as extras.

The cast was mostly first-time actors; as the lead, Natja Brunckhorst is great. She’s the one that had a subsequent career in cinema. Christiane F. feels so authentic and real, it may fall into the category of “great films I may never see again in full.” This does have an opioid withdrawal scene which arguably is the most painful ever committed to celluloid—no small feat. To paraphrase a mutual, the movie is an unvarnished look at addiction.

After watching the film, I was taken aback that Christiane Felscherinow is still alive today. I was surprised when the reading of her Wiki article began—by the end I was more astonished.