Wetlands

Synopsis: Helen (Carla Juri) is a young woman with an obsessive fascination for bodily fluids of all kinds and a perverse lack of care for all matters of hygiene. When she is hospitalised after a freak shaving accident in the nether region, she sees a means by which she might fulfil her desire to reunite her divorced parents.

‘This book shouldn’t be read or adapted to film. It’s nothing more than the mirror of our sad society. Life has so much more to offer than the disgusting perversity of the human heart… We need God.’  So begins Wetlands as adapted for the screen by David Wnendt with co-writers Claus Falkenberg and Sabine Pochhammer. The quote is attributed to a letter to the editor in response to the film’s source material; the international cult bestseller by Charlotte Roche.

Happily, Wnendt ignored the advice of the anonymous correspondent and we are subsequently launched into a funny, shocking and obscene (in a good way) story literally dripping with bodily fluids that in most movies would barely be talked about let alone be seen in the explicit and imaginative ways they are presented here. But this is more than a gross-out, stomach turning, shockfest. There’s some serious stuff going on in the way it makes us consider the baser, more animalistic nature of humans; those aspects of our bodies that we like to hide or cover up in the name of civility. In the book, Helen says ‘Most people have just been alienated from their bodies and trained to think that anything natural stinks and anything artificial smells nice’ and this idea lies at the heart of the more overt and disgusting (in a good way) behaviour exhibited by Helen.

The counterpoint to this is the strained relationship with her obsessivley hygienic and eclectically religious mother (Meret Becker) whose dubious parenting is seen in flashback through the eyes of eight year old Helen (Clara Wunsch). What’s perplexing is that, despite the domestic discord that these flashbacks reveal, the adult Helen is determined to see her mother and father back together again. Perhaps there’s a sense that if she can repair the damaged relationships of the past she can somehow change the outcome of her own life.

Wetlands starts out with a power and energy that leaps off the screen and carries us along in its wake. Much of this is due to the outstanding, magnetic performance by Juri as Helen. It’s also due to the combination of Jacub Bejnarowicz’s sharp cinematography and Andreas Wodraschke’s editing along with strong performances by the rest of the cast and an adapted screenplay that, for all its icky depictions of Helen’s oozing, leaking body, gives us a much greater insight to the other characters, especially her best friend Corinna (Marlen Kruse) and her love interested, Robin (Christoph Letkowski), than we get from the book. Unfortunately, the intensity isn’t sustained and once Helen becomes ensconced in her hospital room, the energy of the film dissipates and, with one or two exceptions (the pizza scene comes to mind) we complete this outrageous journey in a much more pedestrian manner. In the end, if we’d only caught the last fifteen minutes we could be forgiven for thinking that Wetlands was an offbeat romantic comedy.

Nevertheless, there is more to recommend this film than not, and it’s a lot of fun to test yourself with regard to what makes you squirm and what doesn’t. Perhaps it even sits alongside films like Danny Boyle’s 1996 film Trainspotting for its raw and savvy approach to anti-social behaviours. But a word of warning. Although there’s a very sweet (in a somewhat perverted way) romance going on here, I’d be wary of thinking of Wetlands as a first date film.

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