MovieTime

Review

by Jason Di Rosso

This week's guest is Rosemary Blight who produced Clubland and most recently The Eternity Man, directed by Julian Temple, which premiered in Sydney this year. She's chosen the sparse 1987 film Bagdad Café, by German writer-director Percy Adlon, about a German tourist Jasmine (Marianne Sägebrecht) who leaves her husband and finds refuge at a truckstop, somewhere in the Mojave Desert.

It's one of those films, like Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas, where a European sensibility is confronted by American prairie reality.

And a lot hangs off Marianne Sägebrecht's performance—her Jasmine is plump, sweaty and out of place, and she pulls it together beautifully. Like the stranger who rides in to town in many a western, Jasmine changes lives.

Director: Percy Adlon
Cast: Marianne Sägebrecht, CCH Pounder, Jack Palance, Christine Kaufmann, Monica Calhoun, Darron Flagg, George Aguilar, G. Smokey Campbell, Hans Stadlbauer
Producer: Percy Adlon, Eleonore Adlon
Script: Percy Adlon, Eleonore Adlon, Christopher Doherty
Cinematographer: Bernd Heinl
Editor: Norbert Herzner
Music: Bob Telson
Running time: 105
Australian distributor: Umbrella Entertainment (DVD)
Language: English
Classification: M

Further Information

Bagdad Cafe: watch the Flash video version of this Trash & Treasure

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