Review: Wetlands
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
Wnendt clearly takes delight in offending the easily offended, and seems to warn of a shock-for-shock's-sake rendition of the book's biological, gynecological and scatological obsessions.
City Paper grade: B-
Adapted from Charlotte Roche’s controversial 2008 novel, Wetlands offers a preemptive disclaimer in the form of a letter to the editors of the German tabloid Bild complaining that “This book shouldn’t be read or adapted to film.” David Wnendt clearly takes nose-thumbing delight in offending the easily offended, and seems to warn of a shock-for-shock’s-sake rendition of the book’s biological, gynecological and scatological obsessions. But while he doesn’t shy away from the story’s chronic hemorrhoids, anal fissures and neglected hygiene, Wnendt isn’t out for cheap gross-outs so much as to tell an endearing coming-of-age tale. He has the perfect subject in Carla Juri’s Helen, and it’s her desire to transgress and shock, not Wnendt’s, that steers the film into filthy toilet stalls and hospital-gown upskirts. The director records her provocations with a puckish playfulness, opening with an image that appears to be the crack of Helen’s ass, before his spiraling camera reveals it to be the bend of her knee — though we still see her scratching her afflicted backside before we see her face. After an operation, she plots to be kept in the hospital long enough to engineer a reunion between her divorced parents, a contrivance that, along with its revelations, is the film’s least successful aspect. That Wnendt continually shrugs these moments aside to delve back into Helen’s manic fantasies and excretion-soaked adventures is a refreshing break from so much traumatized-teen-girl storytelling, and conjures a rare heroine whose defiant confidence is allowed to be more compelling than her wounded psyche.
