Engelchen

(Little Angel)

Photo Courtesy of the Sundance Film Festival
On February 27th we saw the film Engelchen (Little Angel) at the Portland International Film Festival. The movie tells the tragic story of Ramona (played by Susanne Lothar), who lives in seclusion in East Berlin. Her life is a mixture of numbness and painful events. The story begins to develop when she meets Andrej (played by Polish film star Cezary Pazura) who sells cigarettes on the Black Market. They fall in love, and Ramona is alive with happiness. That all ends when Ramona's baby dies in childbirth.

As Ramona's situation becomes worse and worse, you definitely feel for her. Although it is a good movie and I recommend it, I don't think any one should see it after a close relative or friend dies; the movie is really sad.

- Klaus

Production Information:

Production company: Thomas Wilkening Film, ZDF
Producer: Thomas Wilkening.
Director / Screenwriter: Helke Misselwitz.
Cinematographer: Thomas Plenert
Editor: Gudrun Steinbrück
Set Design: Lothar Holler
Sound: Rainer Haase
Cast: Susanne Lothar (Ramona Schneider), Cezary Pazura (Andrzej), Sophie Rois (Mother), Herbert Fritsch (Papa Klaus), Kathrin Angerer (Lucie), Luise Wolfram (Child), Heide Kipp (Grandmother), Heidemarie Schneider (Doctor)

General Information:

Germany, 1996,90 min., color
German with English subtitles

Helke Misselwitz

Born in East Germany in 1947. Worked as cabinet-maker, psychotherapist and director of youth programming for East German television. Graduated from the Babelsberg Film School in 1982, and attended the Academy of Fine Arts from 1985 to 1988. Directed documentaries from 1988 to the present. Her first feature was Herzsprung (Heart Leap) (92). This is her second feature film.

Other reviews of 'Engelchen (Little Angel)'

One of the few East German directors to have adapted readily to reunification, 49-year-old Helke Misselwitz will be familiar to audiences for her 1992 film, Herzsprung about life in the small town of the same name near Berlin after the Wall came down, which received a special mention at the San Sebastián film festival for its humorous yet sensitive treatment of dead-end lives.

Known mainly for the documentaries that she began making for the DEFA Documentary Studio (where she was employed full time as a director between 1988 and 1991) and has continued to make since reunification (last year's Meine Liebe deine Liebe / My Love Your Love is the most recent), Misselwitz returns to features with another searching look at life in the former East Germany in the shape of Engelchen (Little Angel), a film set in and around Berlin's Ostkreuz railway station.

Like most of the city's transport centres, the Ostkreuz has become home to a number of marginal people left behind by the fading economic miracle and making a living as best they can. The 'little angel' of the title is Ramona Schneider (Susanne Lothar), a hypersensitive woman who has a compulsive fascination with the darker side of life. At the station, she meets up and falls in love with a black-market cigarette seller called Andrzej (played by Polish star Cezary Pazura) a relationship which is obviously doomed. And it is with the downward spiral of the affair - and of Ramona's life - that Misselwitz's film is concerned.

Very much dependent for its effect on the convincing recreation of life around the Ostkreuz station, Little Angel was produced by Babelsberg-based Thomas Wilkening in association with national broadcaster ZDF (for whom it was commissioned by the ubiquitous Christoph Holch). It is notable for the casting of the various characters who hang around the Ostkreuz station, all of whom (including relatively minor parts) are played by distinguished Berlin theatre actors.

Ramona Schneider is a lonely woman who seems to enjoy her isolation, in her small apartment near the Ostkreuz train station in East Berlin. She works in a cosmetics factory, and except for her sister, her life would go totally unnoticed. One day, she accidentally meets Andrzej (Cezary Pazura), a Polish man who sells black-market cigarettes, and her dark life is all lit up. This is a "Cinderella" story anchored in a hard reality. Helke Misselwitz, screenwriter and filmmaker, brings us her only her second feature, but her background in documentaries pays off in the minutely detailed recreation of Ramona's universe. We observe the monotony of her daily living and the welcome contrast Andrzej brings into her world. The screenplay does not follow a predictable line. We mistrust Andrzej's apparent attraction for the "little angel" (the nickname her sister has given Ramona), and when he turns out to be married, contrary to what he had told her earlier, we expect a cliché which never happens. The film begins to take unexpected but inevitable turns, because the actions of the leading characters are true to their psychology.

This small film jewel is enriched by meticulous direction and a superb performance by the two leading actors. Susanne Lothar's portrayal of Ramona, whether in moments of happiness or while sinking into the depths of insanity, is impeccable. There is not a single false moment, and Pazura matches her every move. This realistic "romance" does not lack in black humor, which prevents the failure of love to rescue a wasted life from leaving the audience in a desolate state. When the film closes, it's not with a note of pity, but in a gesture of rage.

Little Angel is the kind of distinctive filmmaking that leaves one enriched and moved, but also melancholy and even disturbed. It is at once a love story, a neorealist depiction of marginality, a tale of a crime, and an exploration of sanity, insanity,and human need.

Director Helke Misselwitz has fashioned a marvelous multifaceted story which depicts a woman, Ramona,who lives by herself near the Ostkreuz train station in East Berlin. She is hypersensitive with an almost compulsive fixation on the dark side of life, a state that has left her alone and isolated. She meets quite by chance a slightly roguish Pole, Andrej, who sells cigarettes on the black market. Their relationship surprisingly blooms, and Ramona finds herself in love. But perhaps inevitably, she cannot sustain her happiness and tragedy ensues.

Susanne Lothar is absolutely superb as the woman full of contradictory desires that ultimately drive "little angel" to her destiny. Misselwitz demonstrates a dextrous capacity for richly realized drama that is hard to forget.

Little Angel is a delight on every level ... transforming downbeat material into magical cinema. - Variety

The International Movie Data Base entry for Engelchen.
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