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Alex Brendumuhl as Josef Mengele and Florencia Bado as Lilith in The
German Doctor
Growth-hormone experiments take on
a sinister cast in The German Doctor.
George Robinson
Special the Jewish News
L
ucia Puenzo's first feature
film, XXY, served notice that
another important voice was
emerging from the "New Argentine
Cinema" Her third film, The German
Doctor, which was released on DVD on
Sept. 16, suggests that Puenzo's voice
has matured rapidly.
Her artistic growth, no doubt, has
been fueled by her multiplicity of
activities. In a period of only 10 years,
she has written and published five nov-
els (including Wakolda, the basis for
the new film), three feature films, three
shorts and two TV miniseries.
Granta magazine chose her as one
of the 20 best young Hispanophone
(Spanish-language) novelists a couple
of years ago, and — although the
competition is formidable — I suspect
she will soon be recognized as one of
Argentina's most promising younger
filmmakers as well.
Like XXY and her second feature,
The Fish Child, Puenzo's new film piv-
ots on how sexuality is inflected by the
nature of the body and the competing
pressures imposed by society and the
dictates of supposed science.
In 1960s Patagonia, Lilith (newcomer
Florencia Bado) is going through the
awkward transition from child to teen-
ager. She is the smallest student in her
new school and feels the understand-
able need to grow up fast and to fit in.
Unfortunately, her new neighbor,
Helmut Gregor (Alex Brendemuhl)
takes an unusually intense interest in
her plight; he is a doctor of mysterious
means, origins and intentions, who is
engaged in experiments with growth
hormones. He's also obsessed with
twins and ideas of racial purity, and it's
not a spoiler to say that his real name is
Josef Mengele.
Although he is a rather chilly, even
forbidding presence, he ingratiates
himself with her family and begins to
include Lilith and her very pregnant
mother Eve (Natalia Oreiro) in his
experiments.
In the meantime, though, Lilith is
befriended by Nora Eldoc, who is work-
ing as archivist and photographer at the
German-language school to which the
girl and one of her brothers are being
sent. The school has its own sinister
past, one that coincides nicely with the
doctor's needs for secrecy and his plans
for the future.
Nora, however, is someone whose
agenda obviously diverges from his.
When we hear her speaking Hebrew
later in the film, it merely confirms
what we suspected. When Eichmann
is captured by the Mossad, things spin
quickly out of control.
Despite the plot synopsis, The
German Doctor is not a thriller. We
know fairly early in the film that
"Helmut Gregor" is not who he claims
to be, and that the school's past
includes the expected profusion of Nazi
salutes and swastika-bearing flags.
Instead, Puenzo focuses her attention
on Midis growing ambivalence about
her new self-appointed mentor.
As in her previous features, Puenzo
displays a real gift for getting inside
her young heroines' heads and, more
important, bringing us into their sub-
jective states through subtleties of cam-
era movement and framing.
Our attention is not on the growing
realization that Gregor is Mengele but
on Midis realization that whoever he
is, he's not the man he pretends to be.
Like Alex, the intersex (unable to be
identified as male or female) 15-year-
old in XXY, Lilith doesn't understand
what is happening to her; all she knows
is that her body is somehow betraying
her, the doctors are behaving strangely
and she is being bullied. Her confusion
only makes the interpersonal crisis all
the more poignant.
How a young girl, looking for an
emotional anchor in a time of personal
turbulence, deals with the realization
that her would-be savior is anything
but becomes the heart of the film and,
like the mechanical hearts provided
for the dolls that her father makes,
it beats steadily, implacably, as the
larger drama plays itself out before her
bewildered eyes.
❑
The German Doctor is now
available on DVD.
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