"Salmonberries" is a 1991 movie that seems to have been intensely disliked by many fans of its star, androgynous Canadian lesbian c&w/folk singer k. d. lang and to have disappointed fans of "Bagdad Cafe," the greatest hit of German director Percy Adlon.

I can understand viewers finding "Salmonberries" slow. I could lop off 15-20 minutes easily without losing any plot or character development, though I have seen a far slower Adlon movie ("Celeste"). I don't, however, understand the acute hostility of many (specifically, Amazon.com "reviewers"). "Salmonberries" seems to me to have a lot in common with "Bagdad Cafe": a somewhat (here less) German woman far from home in a desolate setting (snow-covered northwestern Alaska (north of the Arctic Circle) instead of southeastern California desert) socializing one wild child (lang's character called "Kotzebue," the name of the town) rather than a whole raucous, dysfunctional family) with a very noticeable soundtrack. There's even an American star of yesteryear on hand (Chuck Connors instead of Jack Palance). "Bagdad Cafe" is not linear. It is rather loopy, as is "Salmonberries."

I'll concede that Rosel Zech and Chuck Connors are less charismatic than Marianne Sägebrecht and Jack Palance, but lang is more charismatic than CCH Pounder (IMO).

I especially don't understand the complaint that "Salmonberries" has no plot. The mysteries of the past of the two main characters, the transplanted German librarian Roswitha (Rosel Zech) and the seemingly Inuit (Eskimo) young woman who works on a pipeline and is so butch that she is mistaken by Roswitha and others as being a boy called "Kotzebue" (lang) that obsess each of them are tackled and resolved.

I don't think it is anything of a "plot spoiler" to note that "Kotzebue" is female. Even if I had not known that it was k. d. lang, the hips and neck told me "he" was a she. And it is obvious that Roswitha came from Germany, so that there is some past there that propelled her far from home.

Plot spoiler alert

What happened to change her life from German to Alaskan Roswitha has not revealed to anyone in Kotzebue. The grown-up wild child (found in a box with some beadwork jewelry) whom Roswitha to some extent tames does not know what her origins are. Her plight and her inchoateness stimulate Roswitha to tell "Kotzebue" the question that is haunting Roswitha. Roswitha's father was a communist who died in a Nazi concentration camp. Roswitha and her husband found life in communist Germany unbearable and tunneled out. She obviously made it. He did not. The questions that haunt Roswitha are who betrayed them and did her husband die immediately.

"Kotzebue" steals money and buys two round-trip tickets to Berlin (where the wall has recently come down). Roswitha's questions are answered. Roswitha is very grateful to "Kotzebue" but does not have the sexual feelings for "Kotzebue" that "Kotzebue" has for her.

Back in Kotzebue, the two find the answer (one that was obvious to me) to the question of paternity (of "Kotzebue").

I guess that while still in the "plot spoiler" protection I can also comment on the failure of "Kotzebue" to establish a sexual relationship with Roswitha. I guess this disappointed a large share of the film's lesbian audience. In a slow but interesting reunion of land and Adlon eleven years after making the film, she opines that it would have been phony for Roswitha to give up a "mercy f__k."

Not just lesbians and gay males are disappointed in love (for the latter from the same time, see Keanu Reeves's (character's) inability to give River Phoenix the love he (his character) wanted in "My Private Idaho." "Kotzebue" does not know what a lesbian is or how to turn a straight woman gay, but needs a mother as much as she needs a lover? Roswitha has been obsessed with her dead husband and does not notice (let alone understand) the sexual component in the inept wooing by "Kotzebue." If "Kotzebue" then killed herself -- as would have been necessary in the bad old days of the Production Code -- I'd agree that the story was homophobic, but "Kotzebue" settling for having a friend and a surrogate mother (neither of which she had ever had before) in a small and remote wilderness town seems realistic to lang and to me. (Gay audiences for "My Private Idaho" may have been disappointed that Reeves and Phoenix did not become "more than friends," but I don't recall anyone claiming that the incompleteness of their connection made the movie "homophobic." Or anyone objecting to the lack of sex between the Björk character and the Catherine Deneuve surrogate mother/friend in "Dancing in the Dark."

End of plot spoiler alert

Shooting a movie north of the Arctic Circle during the winter was arduous -- more so for Zech who goes barefoot in the snow than for lang, who was more dressed for the cold (and she's Canadian!). It does not seem to have been as traumatic as "Dancing in the Dark" was for Bjö, another singer cast in an extreme role in her first (and she has vowed last) movie. It is quite possible that going through the movie with lang and Adlon as the discuss various aspects eleven years later enhanced my appreciation of the movie. (This DVD bonus feature has many a lengthy pause as lang formulates responses, but also has some warm laughter. There is also a theatrical trailer and a music video--the latter seems redundant given the stretches of the movie that de facto are lang music video!)

The decisiveness of "Kotzebue" in taking Roswitha to Germany is a bit surprising given her awkwardness in Alaska, but lang shows "Kotzebue" still does not know what to do to get what she wants. I think that both lang and Zech are excellent in a rather sweet romance (or aim-inhibited romance?). The scene of "Kotzebue" howling at the moon inside a huge satellite dish (and being answered by the many dogs) is haunting. The barefoot in the snow segment seems "artsy" to me, but what follows when the two women get back to town is extraordinarily raw a portrayal of how someone unconventional is bated in small towns.

Having seen a lot of German "new wave" movies, the color saturation (especially of Roswitha's bedroom with light shining through the hundreds of jars of salmonberries she has canned from at least 13 summers) and fascination with extreme landscapes (as in many a film of Werner Herzog and Wim Wenders's films shot in the American West) are easy for me to take in stride. I think that there is too much contemplation of the bleak landscape, but I can shrug this off as something German directors do. And I guess that I am also used to the focus on character that some see as "slow-paced." I was at times mystified, but not bored. I like the first two Sägebrecht movies Adlon made (Sugarbaby and Bagdad Cafe) more than I like "Salmonberries," but I like "Salmonberries" more than the final one (Rosalie Goes Shopping) and than "Celeste" (yet another movie about an odd relationship).


© 2008, Stephen O. Murray


For more on the best post-WWII German cinema see http://www.epinions.com/content_4470841476.





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