One of the best things about film festivals is getting to see directors before they hit it big. Their first films aren't always terrific right out of the gate, but it's always impressive to see a confident debut, and know that the filmmaker will go on to bigger and better things.
Despite an impressive visual style and a fearless lead performance from Jasna Fritzi Bauer, Axolotl Overkill isn't a great film, but it has great moments. Adapting her own novel Axolotl Roadkill, Helene Hegemann makes her feature debut with a movie that's often too chaotic for its own good, but still a remarkable leap into filmmaking.
Bauer stars as Mifti, a 16-year-old self-medicating through the psychological wounds of her mother's death (though it's implied she wasn't exactly a straight arrow before then). She'll disappear from her sister's flat for days at a time, drink until she vomits, try any drug put in front of her and hop from bed to bed indiscriminately.
But things get a bit more serious when she falls for an older woman she meets at a supermarket (Arly Jover). Of course, Mifti being Mifti, she leaves and comes back (and leaves and comes back) because she's unsure of her true feelings. Then again, that could just be because Hegemann jumbles up the narrative, so we're not sure if Mifti's life zig-zags from sobriety to debauchery or if it's a colorful descent into hell.
Yet for all its unglamorous shots of people stumbling into bright daylight from a dark club, vomiting in filthy bathroom or waking up on the bottom bunk of the kid's room of the guy you hooked up with, Axolotl Overkill is often disarmingly funny. A drug dealer Mifti befriends also has a side business breeding exotic animals, and one intense scene is defused by a penguin waddling into the room.
Touches like that lead me to believe that this is just the beginning for Helene Hegemann. She's still got a ways to go, but this is a notable first feature that should get her some international attention.
