German filmmaker Percy Adlon had an unexpected success in America with his 1985 ”Sugarbaby,” the comic story of an unhappy, overweight Munich woman whose mad love for a handsome subway conductor brought her back to life. In
”Bagdad Cafe,” Adlon`s new film, he seems to be relating the elation that
”Sugarbaby`s” acceptance in America brought him: It`s about an unhappy, overweight Munich woman (played by ”Sugarbaby`s” Marianne Sagebrecht) who shows up out of nowhere and makes a lot of Americans happy.
”Bagdad Cafe” will probably prove too sweet for many viewers, particularly when its characters start singing, dancing and performing magic tricks, but its sweetness is refreshingly unself-conscious and sincere. Whatever its excesses, it springs directly from Adlon`s sensibility; he`s a poet of solicitousness and gentle concern, as his past films-particularly his exquisite 1980 ”Celeste,” a tribute to Marcel Proust`s housekeeper-amply demonstrate.
Adlon operates in what seems to be a perfect innocence, barely bothering to cover his tracks. He wants to make another film for America, so he will make a film in America. And what is America for most Europeans? A ribbon of highway stretching across an empty, surreal landscape, sparsely populated by
(for them) exotic ethnic groups-Latinos, Indians, blacks.
And so Adlon brings his heroine Jasmin, a hefty German tourist dressed in heavy tweeds who has just abandoned her husband in the wake of an imponderable argument, to the desert town of Bagdad-not a town, really, but a truck stop cafe and a rundown motel, presided over by an angry, suspicious black woman, Brenda (CCH Pounder).
Adlon`s frank embrace of cliche operates in the other direction, too. Jasmin first appears as a caricature of European provincialism, stolid, humorless and instinctively racist. When she first sets eyes on Brenda and her family, she imagines herself being boiled in a giant pot, as cannibals dance around her. (The German title of the film was ”Out of Rosenheim,” a play on ”Out of Africa” with a reference to a typical Bavarian village.)
Jasmin, who has nowhere else to go, settles in for a long stay, much to the irritation of Brenda, who resents the foreign intruder`s strange habits, passion for cleanliness and rapport with Brenda`s children, among whom is a teenage piano prodigy who performs Bach in homage to the motel`s newest guest. Inevitably, affection grows between the two women, as Jasmin brings her German organizational skills to bear on the dilapidated business, and Brenda finds it in her all-American heart to accept one more member of the huddled masses, yearning to be free. Much of the film`s charm resides in the fact that there is no reason for any of this to happen, except for the director`s sheer will that it be so.
Adlon`s direction varies between aggressive artificiality (bizarre camera angles and abstract color overlays) and light, leisurely naturalism. For much of the movie he`s content to train his camera on the formidable Sagebrecht, an unschooled actress (she was a sort of den-mother to Munich`s avant-garde when Adlon cast her in ”Sugarbaby”) who radiates her own force field of warm acceptance and cryptic eroticism. Adlon has even contrived another romance for her, this time with a retired Hollywood set painter, played by veteran star Jack Palance, who lives in a trailer on the motel property. The tall, craggy Palance has aged as well into a figure a few sizes too large for life; when he and Sagebrecht occupy the same frame, the image has the happy, corny majesty of a postcard photograph-they`re two of nature`s wonders.
”BAGDAD CAFE”
(STAR)(STAR)(STAR)
Directed by Percy Adlon; written by Percy and Eleonore Adlon and Christopher Doherty; photographed by Bernd Heinl; art direction by Bernt Amadeus Capra; edited by Norbert Herzner; sound by Heiko Hinderks; produced by Percy and Eleonore Adlon. An Island Pictures release; opens Sept. 9 at the Fine Arts Theater. Running time: 1:31. MPAA rating: PG. Brief nudity.
THE CAST
Jasmin……………………………………..Marianne Sagebrecht
Brenda…………………………………………….CCH Pounder
Rudi Cox………………………………………….Jack Palance
Debby……………………………………….Christine Kaufmann
Phyllis…………………………………………Monica Calhoun
