WETLANDS

Stars: Carla Juri, Christopher Letkowski, Marlen Kruse, Meret Becker, Axel Milberg and Edgar Selge.
Writers: Claus Falkenberg, David Wnendt and Sabine Pochhammer; based on the novel by Charlotte Roche.
Director: David Wnendt

Rating: 4/5

John Hughes meets John Waters in David Wnendt’s sick, stylish adaptation of Charlotte Roche’s corporeal coming-of-age novel, Wetlands. From the star-making central turn by Carla Juri to its stomach-turning portrayal of all that our bodies have to offer, this dizzying, delightful and thoroughly disgusting romp amps up the novel’s rebellious angst and paints those YA years as ones of ‘personal discovery’, in every sense of the term.

Wetlands is not the first film to explore those first sticky fumblings of teenage sexuality, but few have set the stage with a CGI-animated sequence that takes the audience inside a mystical world created by wiping one’s bare nether regions on a public toilet seat. It is an act that stems from defiance, of course; Helen (Juri) is a child of divorce, raised by an unstable mother (Meret Becker) with germaphobic leanings and a distracted father (Axel Milberg) of retarded emotional development.

Helen is hitting her strides as a late teen sexual being and loving every minute of it. She explores herself with all types of fruit and vegetables (ginger is a definite no); randomly indulges in oral sex with strangers, both giving and receiving; enjoys an ambiguously flirty relationship with her bff, Corinna (Marlen Kruse); and, finds fascination in the fluids and feelings that passion produces.

Things go horribly wrong for both Helen and the audience when she nicks her rectum while shaving, resulting in an anal fissure that puts her in hospital. This allows her time to dream of bringing her parents back together, enjoy a blossoming romance with a young nurse (Christoph Letkowski) and ponder a moment from her childhood that she has blocked out over time.

Having explored the heightened, hormone-filled existence of young women from a racially-charged social perspective in 2011’s Combat Girls, Wnendt undertakes a more personal but no less confronting journey in Wetlands. The casting of his extraordinary lead actor aside, the director’s most important contribution is the tone he achieves; lightly comical yet tinged deeply affecting humanism, he is able to portray some truly grotesque acts yet filters them through the playful, inquisitive focus of his protagonist. The boundaries will be pushed too far for some (the ‘pizza’ sequence; the near-fatal lengths to which Helen goes to stay in hospital), but the bravado and sweetness that Carla Juri brings to the role infuses the entire film; evoking the charisma and vulnerability of Meg Ryan and Julia Roberts in their heyday, she is an A-list star of the future.

Ultimately a winning mix of the traditional ‘teen tribulations’ pic and the edgy, fearless mindset of underground cinema (one wag at the screening attended by SCREEN-SPACE called it, “Sixteen Candles meets Trainspotting”), Wnendt’s Wetland is an altogether more buoyant romp than Roche’s book ever was. Key elements of the bestseller have been pared back on-screen (the complexities of Helen’s relationship with the African man who shaves her; the symbolism of her obsession with avocado seeds), allowing the film to construct both a very real central figure and a vivid cinematic heroine for her generation.

Wetlands will screen as the Closing Night film at the 2014 Sydney Underground Film Festival. Full details at the event website here.