Siegegto Deli at 3426 E. West Maple Rd. at Haggerty Rd. (248) 926-9555 Yom Kippur Specials LB. of Sable $32.99 LB. of Lox $16.99 Deli Tray $8.99 per person Dairy Tray $16.99 per person expires 10/15/14 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. ✓ 1 SPECIAL 1 FOR TWO 1 Any a bowls of soup L rBREAKFAST ' SPECIAL Boil, include fresh fruit. r L „LOX LOX OR SABLE $ I I APPETIZER $ 14 14 99 exees 7v75/7411LINCLUDES FREE COFFEE 99 expires 10/15/14 I .1 • Ir I SOUP, SANDWICH $11 99 : • TIAra-aggs, hash browns, cho ice I • I • 1 of mated. AL toast. 7 days a week AND 1 DRINK 10/15/14 10/15/14j $ 3 VY exares L expires I. r ✓ LOX OR SABLE FOR TWO $1899" LB. 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