Verdict
Summary
The movie at less than 90 minutes moves very slowly and might be too draggy for today’s viewers, but it has a sharp edge to it that is unmistakably prescient. I found it a little too off my reservation to fully appreciate it, but there is an audience for this in today’s ultra jaded market.
Plot:
A drifter returns to the girlfriend of his past, but she might kill him in five days if he stays around that long.
Review:
Thomas (Marquard Bohm) has been exiled from his home in Germany, and he drifts around until he essentially returns to the place he originally left years ago to make a life elsewhere. He ends up in the same bar he used to frequent, and it is there where he bumps into his old girlfriend Peggy (Uschi Obermaier) who is charmed by his reappearance. He hops in her car after last call and she drives him to her place, an apartment where several other girls are also living, but never quite at the same time. In the middle of the night, while Thomas is sleeping, Peggy and the other girls convene in the other room where they’ve tied up and gagged another man – one of the other girls’ boyfriends – and Peggy shoots him in the head with a silenced handgun … and then she goes back to bed like it was nothing. When Thomas wakes up the next morning, the girls ask him to haul out a heavy wicker box to one of their cars, and he never stops to ask why it’s so heavy. As it turns out, these women have made a pact with each other to murder each other’s boyfriends after five days of carrying on a relationship, and not only that, but they’re anarchists who make bombs with the intention of killing all men with them. They also steal all their food and provisions, vowing to not rely on anyone for help. When another man comes to Thomas and tells him that he believe he knows what is happening to all the men in Peggy’s life and the other women as well, Thomas is hesitant to believe them … until he realizes that the other man is right. Peggy will be coming for him in just a few more days, and if he’ll want to survive, he’ll have to fight back.
Almost a farce if it weren’t so serious in tone, the German-language film Red Sun has a cool, calculating coldness to it that is chilling, and filmmaker Rudolpf Thome was clearly influenced by the avante garde and French New Wave of filmmaking of the era. The movie at less than 90 minutes moves very slowly and might be too draggy for today’s viewers, but it has a sharp edge to it that is unmistakably prescient. I found it a little too off my reservation to fully appreciate it, but there is an audience for this in today’s ultra jaded market.
Radiance has just released a new Blu-ray edition of Red Sun that comes packed with bonus material, including a thick insert booklet with essays and interviews, plus a new commentary, a reversible sleeve, and more. It’s a handsome deluxe treatment for a very under the radar film.
