THE NASTY GIRL
We’re told at the outset of Michael Verhoeven’s The Nasty Girl that Anja Rosmus inspired this film. What we aren’t told is who Rosmus is or how closely this film is based on what happened to her in the 1980s.
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Rosmus let the contest deadline pass, married one of her former schoolteachers, and had a couple of children. But the stonewalling by the locals continued to rankle. She decided to resume her investigation, enrolling in history courses at the local university and trying unsuccessfully to gain access to certain files in the town’s archives and at the local newspaper. After suing the town for the release of some documents, she ran into more obstacles and received threats of personal violence. For years she required police protection, and a restaurant where she spoke was subsequently demolished by neo-Nazis. Nevertheless, she published her book-length essay in 1983, which was well received nationally (though not written about in the local paper), and went on to write two more books on related subjects as well as numerous scholarly articles. She also collaborated on a few television programs, including one for the BBC; last year Verhoeven made a German TV documentary about her.
Knowing all this, you’d never guess that The Nasty Girl is a high-spirited comedy and a stylistically adventurous film to boot. I haven’t seen Verhoeven’s other films, so it’s difficult to determine whether The Nasty Girl is typical or atypical. Previous films include a Strindberg adaptation (Dance of Death, 1967), two features starring his wife Senta Berger (People Who Live in Glass Houses, 1971, and Dowry, 1975), a film about the antifascist movement under Nazism (The White Rose, 1981), and o.k., a 1970 film that sounds especially intriguing–it’s based on the same gang rape in Vietnam that inspired Brian De Palma’s Casualties of War and starred a 15-year-old Eva Mattes as the Vietnamese rape victim (the film was initially slated to receive a jury prize at the Berlin film festival, but the jury, headed by Dusan Makavejev, was attacked for praising an anti-American film; the jurors resigned in protest and no awards were given to anyone).
Verhoeven tries to mitigate this monotony with a stringent moral lesson tacked on at the end. A triumphant Sonja is honored with a bust of her that will be displayed at the city hall. At the unveiling ceremony, Sonja goes into a tirade, accusing the town of using this tribute in order to silence her, and then runs off with one of her children to a hilltop, where she climbs a tree that is known as the Tree of Mercy, a sort of shrine whose trunk is decorated with religious symbols (which has figured as a central site and prop throughout the film).
