Wetlands

This is without a doubt the most disgusting film I've ever seen. The number of scenes in the movie that make you go "OMG" are probably not countable on one or even two hands. However, the disgusting parts are never there just to arouse disgust. It is all done with a certain amount of grace and balance, by the director but by the main actress as well. I found myself having a good laugh a large number of times. The main actress by the way is truly awesome, beautiful and appealing, and totally fit for the part. There is enough of a storyline to make the movie interesting besides the focus on sex and filthy things. I really totally recommend seeing this movie.

I instantly knew that this film was written and directed by men, because the female characters, including Helen, the main character, lack any credibility to me, as a woman. I also felt that the shock factor was only used to make money, not really to achieve any artistic or philosophical depth. It's difficult to shock these days, the film does it by an (excessive) exposure of all kinds of body fluids and dirt, to the point of boredom. I also felt that the main character was shallow and not likable in any way. I'm a big fan of Lars von Trirer and nothing of that which is human is alien to me. But this felt like a desperate call for attention, rather than a valuable (while shocking) cinema.

"Feuchtgebiete" is a German movie running for clearly over 90 minutes (and dragging for most of it) from roughly 1.5 years ago. There was lots of media coverage around it as it was fairly explicit and polarizing in terms of the sexual content it depicted and dealt with. It is based on Charlotte Roche's partially autobiographic and very successful novel. I have not read it, but I can say that I think she is a smart woman and I enjoy seeing her in talk shows and so on. The first camera shot gives a good description where this film is headed. we see something that looks like a bare ass, but turns out to be the hollow of a knee. The movie is made my David Wnendt. He had quite a lot of success with his previous work "Kriegerin" and there is really nothing similar here like in that one, except that we have a female protagonist in both. The main actress here is Carla Juri and while she has received acclaim from so many awards bodies, I cannot see it at all. Her physical acting was mediocre, her narration was pretty awful, her voice is always the same, and sounded like taken from a bad television movie. She has no talent in terms of line delivery at all. For Juri this was the big breakthrough. Other well-known actors (before this film already) include Meret Becker (Otto Sander's daughter, as her mother), Axel Milberg (as her father) and Edgar Selge (as a doctor). Now, let's talk about the plot. It is very repulsive. There are scenes, in which a young woman uses her genitals to wipe over a public toilet seat and she shows off that she does that on a regular basis and has never gotten any infection. In many other scenes, she puts her finger into something gross (inclusding herself) and licks on it afterward. She tries out all kinds of vegetable in the bathtub and makes a list which ones are most suitable for *. People talk about putting their feces on their beloved's belly. Drugs are abused as if it was perfectly normal. This movie gives a lot of horrible messages and acts as if it was perfectly fine. No area of disgust gets left out. And in the face of all of this, the film tries to be actually relevant as it occasionally refers to the main character's wish for her parents to reunite again. This is the central dramatic storyline, when they are not talking razor injuries in the genital area that is. Anyway, that parents story line is, in my opinion, just a distraction from all the repulsive parts to make this movie somehow seem to have an appropriate plot that touches people. To mention more details, there is a scene involving tampons that you really do not want to see and something involving pizza as well near the end. It's a mess of a film, neither funny, nor dramatically relevant. A movie can be shocking and still deliver a worthwhile story. This one does not even in the slightest achieve that. I highly recommend to stay away.

There is nothing that could concise David Wnendt's Feuchtgebiete aka Wetlands in a single word. Well if one's given the liberty to express what they'd seen or rather witnessed in a plethora of words, it'd most likely be something close to obscene, disgusting, repulsive and most of all shocking. If you've seen its red band previews, you can figure out instantly whether the movie is for you or not. On the other hand if you thought this'd be a usual sex- comedy with some gross factor, believe me when I tell ya what you saw in the preview is nothing compared to the movie. Nothing will prepare you for Wetlands' odd 105 minutes. Greeted initially with a splendid shot of a skater girl, it quickly goes downhill before you can say "ugh". Wetlands follows the sexual and unhygienic adventures of Helen Memel, a girl who is hellbent on making her life as unhygienic as possible and labeling it as her 'experiments'. Helen played charmingly by Carla Juri, is on an experiment with her own genitals and whatnot as she initially states in the movie. Its kind of a parallel she draws with how she feels for her parents and their divorce. While light at heart, the seemingly damaged 18 year old as Helen may seem it also brings out how bad she needed to be loved. Beneath the layers of her weird habits and unimaginable sexual fantasies, lies the conflict with herself and an intense yearning for her parents' reconciliation. And Carla Juri does justice to the role. Her performance was inexplicably good, shuffling from cute and sexy to crude and repelling seemed like an easy feat for her. Right from the CG titles, her narration reminded me sorely of David Fincher's Fight Club. I for one consider myself hardened, watching movies like A Serbian Film, The Human Centipede, Martyrs, Inside, Hostel or even Salo but there were scenes in Wetlands that truly deserved to be called cringe worthy. I wouldn't suggest Wetlands for the faint of heart/stomach or the more perverse either. As evident from the trailers this was marketed as a over the top raunchy comedy but if you overlook all those gross and perverse segments (which is hard I know), there is a sensibly written story about the perils a late- adolescent girl goes though be it physical or emotional. This movie does a decent or rather an indecent job of blending the aversion with a story of someone who aches for some love. I wonder if the same would work had it been a male lead, and of course an immediate reminiscence was Qaushiq Mukherjee's Gandu.

One of the grossest films I've ever seen, delving into mysteries of the female anatomy that, as a man, I might rather have left a mystery, but it's wild and original and smart. If you have a strong stomach, it's well worth attempting. Carla Juri plays a horndog 18 year-old girl with a bad case of hemorrhoids. The problem is exacerbated when she badly cuts herself shaving her butthole. She quickly enters the hospital for surgery. During the recuperation, she starts a flirtatious relationship with a cute male nurse (Christoph Letkowski) and attempts to use her hospital stay to reunite her divorced parents (Meret Becker and Axel Milberg). The butt stuff is not nearly the most disturbing part of this movie, but it manages to be quite funny and charming even while it's at is most horrifying. Unfortunately, when it arrives at a more dramatic climax, it doesn't really feel earned, so the whole film deflates a bit. Juri is absolutely amazing, giving one of my favorite performances of recent times. I was a bit disappointed that the film was directed by a man, given that it has a refreshing female point of view, but the original novel was written by a woman (Charlotte Roche), and at least one of the screenwriters was female, as well.

Wetlands is a film that prides itself on being gross, unsavory, and not for the faint of heart, but does so in such a candy-colored manner that also masquerades as an attempt at sensory overload that it forbids you from looking away at all its grossness. It gives us a lot to zero-in on with every scene, from unadulterated narration, vibrantly-colored visuals, and explicitly-detailed fetishes carried out in a manner that make the film equal parts stomach turning (for some) and irresistible for others (like myself). If you're one of the people who thought that tampon-sharing and anal fissures were underexplored topics in contemporary cinema, or cinema in general, here's a film that gives you a nod and a thumbs up. The film stars Carla Juri in a fearless role, especially for an actress so young and so inexperienced. She plays eighteen-year-old Helen Memel, a young woman obsessed with filth and depravity, so much so that she actively exposes her * to some of the most unclean places in society, like public bathrooms. She believes body hygiene, especially the cleanliness of the genitals, is hugely overrated, and relishes the thought of sexual pleasure through the use of vegetables. Helen's mom (Meret Becker) is a hygiene-obsessed, religious soul, constantly changing her religions and working to protect her daughter from a filthy society, and her father (Axel Milberg) is a cold, unfeeling soul who spends little time associating with her on a level that could be considered very loving. Helen is often left to look towards Corinna (Marlen Kruse), her best friend who engages in the same kind of depravity that she adores so much. One thing Helen detests with all her heart is shaving, so naturally, she tries to conduct the act in the fastest manner possible. In the middle of shaving her buttocks, she gives herself an anal fissure, and winds up in the hospital in searing pain with a bulging blister. In the hospital, Helen recounts a lot of her parents' marriage to us, and establishes relationships with the nurses and such, making for a film that is equal parts devoted in showing the pasts of these characters as well as the present. With that, we also see the relationship between Helen and Corinna go beyond innocuous discussions of sex between one another to the point of the actual practice of sex and *. Writer/director David Wnendt and co-writer Claus Falkenberg do their best to balance Wetlands, making it equal parts a story filled with shock and gross-out gags but also an intense, unusual character study in the most rewarding sense. Wetlands isn't a film you necessarily watch, but feel; feel as it crawls underneath your skin, making even the most hardened, fearless film-watcher wince with its perversions and its depictions of sexual liberation and hygienic carelessness. Juri plays a character so in love with the idea of being unclean and unabashedly disgusting that she owns her role, and is fiercely watchable throughout the entire film. Make no mistake, however, as Wetlands is a filthy film, arguably the filthiest released last year. Punk-rock in its attempt to destroy our social norms and trashy in the best sense, its desire to depict a variety of perversions, fetishes, and disregard for personal hygiene in explicit detail makes it one of the most daring and awe-inspiring pieces of work in quite sometime. I'm hesitant to bill it as satire, being that it seems to fully embrace this kind of deviant counterculture, however, I employ the rule of them I use in detecting and recommending satire with this film, and that is to see it because by fearing or condemning it without seeing it, you're only proving it correct. Starring: Carla Juri, Marlen Kruse, Meret Becker, and Axel Milberg. Directed by: David Wnendt.

I have to admit, I never read the novel this is based on. But I'm guessing the people who don't like the movie at all (which is fine), either haven't read the book or don't like the book. I'm saying this, because what you are getting here, is very close to adult films. Something people in Germany (censors that is), do not have a problem with (the movie is rated 16+). I can only guess the movie will be NC-17 (if they rate it) in America. There are explicit images of male genitalia, a lot bare breasts (though mostly of our main female lead). With all that said, I went into the movie with the impression I wouldn't like it at all. And maybe it didn't really need all those ... (sometimes disgusting) "shots" (no pun intended) or the language. But the central story about someone looking for love and not being able to connect (because of their weird childhood, to say the least), is strangely appealing ...

"Wetlands" was made for Shock Value. No real person is as stupid and gullible as the characters in this film are almost every day of their lives. It's not funny or arousing or entertaining watching an ignorant and promiscuous female go through an entire film doing extremely disgusting and hazardous things (that was clearly scripted and/or directed to shock viewers that aren't into these types of fetishes). I wasn't surprised by anything in the film because I've personally witnessed many women and men (especially German men) online that enjoy disgusting body fluids oozing out of the body whether it was their own or someone else. They also enjoy S&M and other forms of self-mutilation and torture of their body parts beyond what would be considered pleasurable. I love artistic indie films with explicit sex, especially when the finished film is uncensored. I also enjoy films that aren't afraid to experiment creatively but I hate excessive and unnecessary violence. There was no violence in this movie but there were endless scenes of the female lead digging in her * (and Anus) for disgusting excrement. She enjoyed the smell and taste of whatever was inside of her *. Based on how careless and nasty she was throughout the film, like walking barefoot into a flooded public restroom, rubbing her ass and * over a very dirty toilet; I thought she would have been hospitalized for more than just an infected hemorrhoid. Just when you think she will finally begin to grow up and act like a normal person after having surgery; she continues her obnoxious behavior in the hospital; she also flirts with a cute male nurse, constantly putting his job at risk but he didn't care because he was fascinated by her "boyish" charm of being a care free, flirtatious and slutty spirit that he wished all girls could be. The CRINGE worthy moments pollutes (in a distracting manner) this seemingly interesting Artsy foreign film, so much so that I had to force myself to watch it through to the end.

When I first heard about this movie being described as shocking, perverse, disgusting even it honestly perked my curiosity because I have seen many films like that and not all to my liking. I came expecting something gross or even out of the top, there was I point I didn't know what to expect. What I found instead was a very well made comedy about a teenager with unusual hygiene habits and dysfunctional divorced parents, an interesting well paced story with emotional and realistic characters, great performances and a great story that was well directed. What the criticism tells me is what we know so well, this film could have never in a million years be made in America. American audiences love and tolerate violence but the thought of nudity and sexuality abhors them. I came expecting a John Waters movie, I found a great movie.

The book was quite the scandal when it came out a few years ago. I personally found it a bit boring after a while so I didn't finish it. The movie however is very well done. It manages to be both serious and funny, which is rather the exception than the rule for German films: usually they're either very serious or slapsticky "funny". Visually this could be called a German version of Trainspotting, with some nice and unusual shots and angles, freaky dream sequences etc. The acting throughout the whole cast is amazing, not only the Helen, the lead role, but also her parents, the nurses, the drug dealer etc. I didn't get the feeling that I so often have when watching (and hearing!) German actors in films: that they are noticeably acting. So go watch this, especially if you don't think much of the book. It's a fine movie!