London Film Fest 2010 Day 5 - PICCO

German writer-director Philip Koch's debut feature is a closely observed prison drama loosely based on Alan Clarke's acclaimed BBC Play for Today, SCUM. Picco translates as lackey, and the protagonist is a quiet, diffident teenage boy landed in a prison cell with three other kids. The prison is claustrophobic, dull and full of sinister threat. The pivotal moment comes when the protagonist witnesses a rape, but is persuaded not to stick his head up above the parapet and report it. From then we see a subtle shift from bullied to bully, as he realises that there is no sustainable middle ground.

Koch portrays this with a fairly straightforward narrative style, and some impressive steady-cam work within the cell. The performances and production design all add up to an authentic feel. I guess my problem with the film is that it doesn't feel fresh or dangerous enough. The director warned the audience at the LIFF screening that it was going to be uncomfortable to watch, but actually it really wasn't. Certainly there was nothing to match the razor-blade scene in similarly themed UN PROPHET, and for those of us who'd watched LEAP YEAR earlier in the day, PICCO seemed like pretty bland fare by comparison.

I guess my overall reaction was that this was a coming-of-age prison drama like many others - quiet inmate turns bully to survive. It is well-told and well-acted, but ultimately, what does it add to the genre? Not much.

PICCO played Cannes 2010 and will be released in Germany on 25th November.

Overlooked DVD of the month - BLIND SPOT: HITLER'S SECRETARY

This month's overlooked DVD is a companion piece or rather source material for the brilliant German film, DER UNTERGANG/DOWNFALL. It is not a good film in terms of cinematic technique. But it is an absolutely gripping movie in terms of its subject matter. For this is simply an extended interview with an old German woman called Traudl Junge. As a young woman sh was chosen by Hitler to be one of his personal secretaries. As she tells it, she was not a fanatic Nazi but rather an unthinking young girl blinded by the glamour of the Fuhrer; her ego flattered by his choice. All at once she was privy to the intimate details of Hitler's life both at Berchtesgaden and finally in the Berlin bunker. If she never saw high-level military meetings she does add texture to our accounts of his existence - providing crucial historic source material. In addition, Traudl can perhaps help us understand how a nation marched toward its own defeat behind such an evil man. So many years later, it is compelling to see this old woman come to terms with her guilt. At the end of the documentary she makes a chilling statement: for a long time she had comforted herself with the notion that she was just a young girl and how could she have known what was happening on the wider scale? But then, one day when she walking in Munich she came across a memorial for a young girl who was killed for resisting Nazism. That girl was the same age as Traudl when she went to work for Hitler. So it MUST have been possible to know. This sums up for me the tragedy of Germany at the levels below that of the planners and instigators - a moral abstention.

BLIND SPOT: HITLER'S SECTRETARY/IM TOTEN WINKEL: HITLERS SEKRETAERIN premiered at Berlin 2002. It is now available on DVD.