"Salmonberries"
                      A film review by
                   Linda Lopez McAlister
                   on "The Women's Show"
                WMNF-FM (88,5) in Tampa, FL
                      February 19, 1994

   For the last two years the Tampa Bay Pride Film Festival has tried
unsuccessfully to book the k.d. lang starring vehicle "Salmonberries" for the
festival.  The film has never played in a theater in this area but it is now
available on video at some local video stores and at Brigit Books in St.
Petersburg.  If you want to see k.d. on the screen, the small screen it will
have to be.

  What I had heard about this film is that people either love it or hate it.
If you want to see it because you're looking for a lesbian love story with
torrid sex scenes you'll be very disappointed.  If you want to see it because
you like to look at k.d. lang, you'll like it, since she's in practically
every scene. If you want to see it because you enjoy films in which thereare
strong, loving bonds between women or because you are an admirer of Percy
Adlon's films, you'll also find it satisfying.  I think the film is going to
make most sense to people who know some of Adlon's other work, particularly
"Bagdad Cafe," but also "Rosalie Goes Shopping."

  Percy Adlon is a German filmmaker who seems to be fascinated by the human
diversity and the odd out of the way places he finds in the United States.
His best-known films feature German women who end up in the U.S. for one
reason or another; Jasmin in Bagdad Cafe is abandoned by her German husband
in a Mojave Desert settlement called Bagdad, Rosalie married an American
soldier and came home with him to a small town in Texas, and now, in
"Salmonberries," Roswitha (played by Rosel Zech) is a refugee from East Berlin
who ends up as the librarian in a tiny Alaskan town called Kotzebue. Adlon's
theme in these pictures is often how wildly disparate women can overcome all
kinds of national, racial, ethnic, and other barriers, not to mention initial
hostility, and eventually come to understand and love one another. In
Bagdad Cafe" it's a Bavarian hausfrau and a frazzled African-American
roadside cafe owner.  In "Salmonberries" it is the fortysomething, emotionally
repressed German librarian and a strange young Alaskan orphan also name
Kotzebue (k.d. lang)--a woman that everyone thinks is a boy.   They
start out very badly indeed with Roswitha's insulting question whether
Kotzebue can read being answered by a violent outburst of book throwing.

  The film is typical Adlon, in his use of a broad spectrum of
colored lenses and colored light; his expressive use of odd camera angles
and slow motion; and his loving studies of the "characters" to be
found in these odd corners of the United States that he creates his films
around.  Because so many of these elements prominent in "Bagdad Cafe"
are present here, there is a sense in which "Salmonberries" seems a little
formulaic--as though Adlon were trying to repeat the successful mix he used
there, only in a different setting with different local color and odd folks.
If that were all there was, I'd have to conclude that he has failed in the
effort to produce the Alaskan version of "Bagdad Cafe."  But that's not all
there is too it; the effort is not just to remake that film with snow instead
of sand.  Adlon stretches to achieve something quite different here: the
emotional tone is darker, the problems of the main characters are more emotion-
ally disturbing, and there is a level of political discourse here as well.
that was missing in "Bagdad."

  I don't want to give a plot summary, but the theme of the film is captured
very well in the wonderful first sequence in close up of an old Eskimo man, a
vociferous reader who has read everything in the Kotzebue library, retelling
scenes from "Madame Bovary" and saying how close he feels to the people in
that novel though they are 19th C. French and he is a 1990 Alaskan Eskimo.  We
can understand and love one another across barriers.  In fact, in
"Salmonberries" it took people as different as Roswitha and Kotzebue to open
the doors for one another to be able to figure out who they are and to put to
rest the ghosts haunting them from the past.

  An interesting and compelling film.  Too bad it has had such a hard time
finding distribution in this country. Three cheers for video tape.

  For the WMNF Women's Show this is Linda Lopez McAlister on Women and Film.
Copyright 1994 by Linda Lopez McAlister.  All rights reserved.  Please do
not reprint this review without the permission of the author.