Europa Europa
Director: Agniesza Holland
Year Released: 1990
Rating: 2.0
A young Jewish teenager is separated from his family and mistaken for a Nazi in yet another film about Jewish Identity during WWII. But Holland sees the boy as little more than an object of lust - the only reason he's 'saved' so many times is because the soldiers (and girls/women) are attracted to him, and this alone is his defining characteristic. The two dream sequences fail to work because they never seem to be a part of the narrative - the protagonist never comes across as having much of an internal life aside from some ineffective interior monologues - and I can't help but feel that the film never treats the War as seriously as the other Odyssey-type narratives such as Ballad of a Soldier or Come and See. The 'based on a true story' banner is milked when some dubious events pop up in the narrative to free the boy from harm's way - my Bullshit-O-Meter was pinging nonstop ('slightly fictionalized?' ... how about 'highly fictionalized?').
