Above is a real attention-getter: the trailer for Wetlands, a new German comedy opening September 5th. In short, this is about a girl who loathes hygiene. Her attitude seems to be the least amount of grooming is necessary before leaving the house. The first we see of her in this vaguely-NSFW trailer is her picking a deep wedgie. So, romance!
This Sundance and SXSW favorite finds this teenager admitted to the hospital for her unhygenic ways, where it appears she undergoes quite a bit of treatment and cathartic therapy to unblock her issues. There's also a nice, handsome young orderly around to help her sort out her issues, which appear to involve her childhood, her parents, and a lot of puss, blood and goo. Why they're not releasing this on Christmas on 3000 screens is beyond my limited human understanding.
Wetlands is coming to us from Strand Releasing, a fantastic distributor that has been responsible for bringing loads of auteurist masterpieces to audiences over the years. Just this year, they've been responsible for a bushel of great movies. Sight & Sound favorite Stranger By The Lake hit American shores this spring due to Strand, a hypnotic French Hitchcockian thriller set at a gay beach.
And just this week, they released Catherine Breillat's Abuse Of Weakness, an upsetting drama (Breillat knows no other kind!) about an aging, handicapped filmmaker who develops a dangerous co-dependency on a common criminal. The elegant Isabelle Huppert gives one of the year's best and most meaningful performances in this psychologically-complex (and apparently autobiographical) nightmare about the lengths another person's neediness will take us. And yes, that dude's name is totally KOOL SHEN.
Those movies might sound like homework to some who aren't interested in world cinema, but Wetlands certainly looks a bit poppier, and a bit peppier than your average arthouse fare, featuring music by Peaches and Canned Heat. And there are a lot of taboos being broken here: guys are routinely allowed to be gross in movies, and no one bats an eyelash. But hello, the human body is gross, regardless of sex. Women can be nasty, rude and crude just as well as men. Wetlands hits select theaters September 5th.
