When the personal becomes political in My German Friend, the inability of the young lovers to separate those facets of their lives has tragic results. Sulamit (Celeste Cid) and Friedrich (Max Riemelt) meet as adolescents in an upper-middle-class Buenos Aires neighborhood, sharing friendship, shy smiles, a tentative touch. Their mothers glance disapprovingly but say little at first. Observant viewers will catch the symbols of what divides them before the words are spoken. Friedrich is part of Argentina’s German community and Sulamit belongs to the country’s Jewish minority. In the 1950s, when the film begins, memories haven’t had time to mellow.
And there is more. Rifling through dad’s desk, Friedrich discovers a terrible secret: His father was an SS officer who changed names and identity when fleeing postwar Europe.
German-Argentine director Jeanine Meerapfel crafts an emotionally complex narrative from the continual coming together and pulling apart of Sulamit and Friedrich. She follows him to study in a German university. Are his studies in the Fatherland part of an effort to follow Sulamit to her roots? By this time, the 1960s, hair is growing shaggier and attitudes have hardened. Friedrich is drawn to the radical edge of the era’s left, where militants speak of erasing everything that exists and creating “the New Man,” never realizing that the Nazis said the very same thing.
My German Friend is also a meditation on identity. In his hatred for his father (and love for Sulamit?), Friedrich rejects his German lineage and claims to be only Argentinian. Sulamit tries to find the balance between heritage and the present day. Like all Jewish children, she says, she was taught to fit in.
Meerapfel studied in Germany during the ’60s and her film vividly recreates the tumult of that time and place. The story inspires an emotionally nuanced performance from Cid as the protagonist, Sulamit.
My German Friend will be screened at 7 p.m. on Sunday, April 12 at the UW-Milwaukee Union Theatre as part of the 37th Annual Latin American Film Series.
For more information on this year’s Latin American Film Series, which runs April 10-16, visit www4.uwm.edu/clacs/filmseries/filmseries37.cfm.
My German Friend
Three stars
Celeste Cid
Max Riemelt
Directed by Jeanine Meerapfel
Not Rated
