"Nobody Loves Me"
                             A Film Review by
                           Linda Lopez McAlister
                           on "The Women's Show"
                          WMNF-FM 88.5, Tampa, FL
                               June 1, 1996

   I'm going to be away next weekend so I'm jumping ahead a bit to tell you
about a film that's going to be screened in Tampa on Monday, June 10 (as part
of the WMNF benefit film series at the Tampa Theater. In case you don't know
about this series, every Monday night there's an interesting film screened at
6:30 p.m. with a portion of every ticket sold going to support our favorite
radio station. These are frequently Tampa premieres and, alas, often the one
and only chance you'll have to see a particular film in Tampa, if not in the
Tampa Bay area). The film coming up on June 10 is "Nobody Loves Me" by German
filmmaker Doris Doerrie. (Later in the month, on Monday, June 24th you'll have
probably your only chance locally to see "From the Journals of Jean Seberg"
that I saw up in Philly and reviewed (favorably) a few weeks ago.

    I caught "Nobody Loves Me" several weeks ago at the Beach Theater in St.
Pete Beach. Since it is the work of a fairly prominent German woman filmmaker
I thought I'd take a look, even though I hadn't been particularly taken with
Doris Doerrie's earlier film called, simply, "Men." That earlier film was kind
of an entertaining screwball comedy about a young woman and two males she knew
(one of whom liked to wear a gorilla mask, as I recall) I was disappointed
that there didn't seem to be much feminist consciousness to it so it seemed
like a lost opportunity to say something about gender relations in
contemporary German society. Anyway, it's been quite a while since then so I
thought I'd see what Doerrie is up to now. To my delight I found "Nobody Loves
Me" to be a huge leap forward on both the "interesting" and "enjoyable"
scales, and even a few gradations higher on the "feminist" scale. In fact,
this is one of the most entertaining and intelligent films I've seen in a long
time. It's just chock full of compelling ideas and characters and it careens
along at a fast clip that keeps the audience wholly involved although
sometimes laughing and scratching you head bemusedly at the same time. It is a
very funny film but at the same time has a decidedly dark side to it as well.

    I'm a little puzzled as to how to talk about the plot without it sounding
weirder than it is or telling you things you'd best discover for yourself. Let
me just try to set the scene. It opens with Fanny Fink an about-to-be 30 woman
who works as a security person at the Cologne/Bonn airport, trying to make a
video clip about herself for a dating service, and in so doing telling us
about herself and her views on what she's seeking in a man. She can't finish
it and as she indicates how she feels, it seems increasingly unlikely that
this dating service is going to be the answer to her quest--to find a durable
and satisfying relationship with an appropriate man by the time she's thirty.

   Fanny lives in a crumbling postwar high rise apartment building whose
imhabitants are a bizarre collection of wild characters among whom Fanny's
ordinariness seems out of place. She gets acquainted with one of her
neighbors, a gay Afro-German psychic female impersonator with white polka dots
on his shaved head who predicts that she'll meet the man she's looking for and
know him because he's blonde, handsome, well-dressed and associated with the
number "23." Lo and behold, the new landlord, who's pretending to rennovate
the building but actually trying to drive the inhabitants away, seems--at
first--to fit the bill and much of the plot has to do with showing why he fails.
But there's a great deal more to this film than its romantic comedy side.
There's the real love relationship that develops between Fanny and her dying
Black psychic friend; much social commentary about the absurdity of contempory
urban Germany (made easier to depict by the fact that the story takes place
during Carneval (i.e., Mardi Gras) for which Cologne is famous; meditations on
suicide and death; and a bit of the occult all rolled together.

   The week this film played in St. Pete a number of people came up to me to
tell me about this amazing film they had seen. I was glad I had seen it too.
Now you'll have one last chance to catch "Nobody Loves Me" at the Tampa
Theater at 6:30pm on Monday, June 10.  Viel Vergnugen!                

For the WMNF Women's Show this is Linda Lopez McAlister on Women and Film.