"Europa Europa"
                Reviewed by Linda Lopez McAlister
            For The Women's Show, WMNF-FM, Tampa, FL

    I never thought I'd be on the Women's Show giving an
enthusiastic review to a film whose main focus is a man's penis,
but that's exactly what I'm going to do this morning.  The film is
EUROPA EUROPA and it gave me my first opportunity to view a film by
a respected European woman director, Agnieszka Holland, whose
earlier films such as Angry Harvest in 1984 have earned her acclaim
from international film festivals and an Academy Award nomination
for best foreign language film.  Although the new film is a joint
French and German production, Holland is a Pole and a graduate of
the excellent Prague Film School in Czechoslovakia. Her early films
made in the 1970's were considered part of Czechoslovakia's "New
Wave" Cinema.  Now she lives in Paris, but the names in the credits
of this ambitious production reveal that its creative team is still
more Eastern European than French or German.

     What about this penis business?  Well, you might say that
while the focus of the film is penile, it is not phallic.  Let me
explain.  The film is a biography--actually in the form of an
autobiography--of Solomon Perel, a man now in his late 60s who
lives in Israel but who was born a Jew in 1925 in Germany.  He
narrates the story of his first 18 years beginning with his
circumcision (which he tells us he remembers) and the saga of
Perel's penis begins.  When Perel is 13, Nazis attack his family's
home and kill his sister so the family flees Eastward to Poland.
When the Germans invade Poland the following year, their parents
tell Solomon and his brother to flee further East but they become
separated and Solomon ends up in Russian territory in a Communist
orphanage learning to become a good Marxist.  When the Germans come
and he is captured, the combination of his perfect German, his
sweet good looks, and his ability to translate between German and
Russian endear him to the German soldiers and they believe him when
he says he is a "pure German" and he becomes, in effect, a member of
the German army.  Here's where his circumcised penis becomes
problematic--not the symbol of phallic domination and power but
something that must be hidden and remain unobtrusive.  His life
depends on it. One of the funniest scenes in this surprisingly
humorous film is when Solomon (now called Jupp--a nickname taken
from the initials of the German name he makes up for himself--Josef
Peters) is taking a bath in a wash tub in a barn and a gay Nazi
soldier comes in behind him and reaches for his penis. The comedy
of the chase that ensues stems from the misunderstandings of one
another's motives.  Jupp thinks he's being chased because his
Jewishness has been discovered.  The gay soldier thinks Jupp's
running away from him because he's gay.  Both of their secrets are
revealed and a touching friendship develops before the soldier is
killed in battle.

   At this point Jupp decides he can't stand the masquerade any
longer so he tried to defect to the Russian side, but turns out a
war hero instead and comes to the attention of the aristocratic
Prussian company commander who sees in this boy the noble Aryan son
he has always wanted.  So he offers to adopt him and sends him back
to Germany to become a cadet at the Reich's top military academy.
Here it's even harder than at the front to hide a circumcised
penis--everything is problematic: the showers, the doctor, the
girlfriend.  He even tries to create foreskin by pulling the skin
on his penis down and tying it with a string to make it look
uncircumcised, but all he gets for his trouble is an infection.
When the war ends he has to convince the Russian army that he is
not what he seems, a German cadet, but a Jew masquerading as a
German to save his life. Miraculously he encounters his brother
who has survived the concentration camps, and who confirms his real
identity. In one of the most unlikely shots that has ever been
used in the history of filmmaking to represent liberation the two
brothers stand with their backs to the camera in quarter profile
and pee two great jubilant arcs with their newly liberated
penises. And then they walk arm in arm down the road to a new life
as Jews in Palestine.