Film: Barfuss
Release date: 13th October 2005
Certificate: 15
Running time: 118 mins
Director: Til Schweiger
Starring: Til Schweiger, Johanna Wokalek, Nadja Tiller, Michael Mendl, Steffen Wink
Genre: Comedy/Drama/Romance
Studio: Touchstone
Format: DVD
Country: Germany
“All you need is love.” opined the Beatles with tuneful utopianism. Sadly, where the rom-com is concerned, that’s not quite enough for cinemagoers; who expect their heartstrings to be tactically tugged, a generous dose of mirth, and a palatable serving of sweet and sour sentiment before reaching an amorous payoff. German actor-director Til Schweiger (recognisable to English audiences as Sergeant Stiglitz from Inglorious Basterds) stars in and helms this 2005 effort, casting himself as half of a decidedly odd couple. Schweiger’s often blackly comic tale accents a typically saccharine format with despair, as his derelict romantics brave depression and stuffy orthodoxy.
Hard drinkin’ womanisin’ ne’r do well Nick Keller – repeatedly dismissed for his anti-authoritarian quirks – is desperate for a job. So desperate that he’ll do anything for an honest Euro, and eagerly accepts a new assignment.
Arriving for his first day dressed to the nines, Nick’s determined to make good – but is aghast to learn that he’s a floor-scrubbing dogsbody, mopping the wards at a mental hospital.
With auto-destructive flair, he quickly arouses the boss’s ire and is sacked – but not before earning a measure of redemption. Voyeuristically espying a patient attempting suicide, he chivalrously intervenes, saving her. This quirky damsel, Leila, forms an unlikely bond with her slacker prince and, with naïf guile, escapes from the hospital, stalking her crush home. Stupefied, Keller threatens to turn her in. But Leila cannily plays the ace of all guilt cards, threatening suicide – forcing Nick to grudgingly offer her sanctuary on his sofa.
The mismatched pair kindle an unlikely (yet eminently predictable) affection, as Keller uses Leila as a pretend girlfriend to impress his affluent parents. His brother is due to get married, at a ceremony which his folks – in chilling corporate-speak – characterise as a “merger.” Nick’s presence is mandatory.
Setting out on a trans-Germanic road trip, fact and fantasy begin to blur as awkward rapport yields to tenderness. But, with the authorities in hot pursuit, no money and a buffet-full of fusty bourgeois obstructing their happiness – bliss is far from assured for these outlaws of lurve…
From the moment our two beauteous protagonists are introduced, it’s evident that the two are fated to intertwine. Both are unfeasibly attractive; adorably moulded, as only silver screen dropouts are. Beautiful losers. Her: sullen, kooky cutie confined to a mental hospital. Him: chiselled, middle class black sheep on the slide. As the narrative intercuts between them and a tepid, MOR instrumental jangles from the soundtrack, the trajectory of the film is preordained. Déjà vu instantaneously ensues.
Barfuss (translated as Barefoot) has been construed as a fable, or fairytale by some; but this merely disguises its innate conservatism. If it possesses any ‘mythic’ resonance, this derives from its slavish adherence to a succession of flaccid Hollywood tropes. The film is certainly accessible; but what may be considered ‘universalism’, from an Anglocentric perspective, merely reflects its similarity to mainstream US product. Dialect aside, there is little here which appears exotic, modernist or distinct. It’s all discomfortingly familiar – a Germanic cultural ventriloquism that just about gratifies our cinema-schooled expectations. The antagonising forces, like the heroes, bear the hallmarks of faded melodrama. Love must combat those timeless, implacable foes: money, authority, outrageous circumstance, patriarchy and tradition.
Despite a smattering of darkly comic wit, gags are often inane, and frequently repetitious. An early scene – in which Leila is mistaken for a prostitute and asked to gratify a leering punter – is an unsettlingly risqué, cruel extension of the ‘fish out of water’ conceit. The tone rapidly brightens thereafter, however, as narrative shifts gear into road-movie mode. Leila’s social ineptitude primes a comedy of errors that simultaneously humiliates Keller, and comically emphasises her outsider status. Watch as Leila walks into the men’s toilet; fumbles with her fork; tells Nick’s stepdad he thinks he’s an old fart, etc. These successive faux pas elicit an embarrassing pathos, as she blunders, childlike, through bourgeois mores. Regrettably, they often feel like a cheap contrivance – frequently provoked by Nick abandoning his charge, with the request that she “stay put for a minute.” She never does.
The film’s cursory rendering of institutional captivity provides a sombre backdrop to Leila’s fragile, photogenic solipsism; but little more. Dido’s presence on the soundtrack consolidates this mood; a maudlin, unrequited melancholy. Predictably, Leila’s former symptoms diminish as her malaise is transferred to a near fatal case of love sickness. Whilst spirited and not without intuitive guile, salvation is thus placed beyond her control. ‘Love’ disenfranchises Leila, rendering the character increasingly dependent on her reformed lothario. Though rewarded with optimism and confidence, she is later diminished to a blubbing, fatalistic damsel awaiting deliverance. Preferable to suicide; but hardly a feminist role model. Love may be the ultimate placebo, but it can only be administered by our hero, Nick the hesitant.
One notable aspect in which the film eschews convention is an almost total absence of...well, the rom in the com. Our characters never kiss; their love is discussed, but the concept never consummated. This curiously chaste, abstract idyll is necessary to prevent tarnishing Nick. Though his stud status is inferred from the outset, Nick’s affection towards Leila is often paternal. An ambiguous romancer-guardian, and clearly the authoritative partner, he acts in a playful, platonic manner, but never interacts with Leila erotically. She, too, is denied a sexual identity – thus assuming an almost childlike unknowing Nick never threatens to rupture. Schweiger plays safe in avoiding the messy complexities this might elicit; instead turning his romance into a perversely pure tale of self denying devotion.
Leila’s habit of walking barefoot (hence the film’s title) can be considered as a crude metaphor for her refusal of constraint and convention. Paradoxically, the movie is overly encumbered by a set of generic binds that warp its early promise. Though it takes superficial pops at profiteering, corporate fat-cats, Barfuss’ bland pleasures embody the machinations of those myopic suits it purports to satirise. Sadly, the results are anodyne and frustratingly tame. Endurable in-flight entertainment. Just. DJO
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