Lulu and Jimi

German film tends to divide into either big, solid, worthy projects like Florian Henckel von Donnersmark’s Oscar-winning The Life of Others and last year’s The Baader-Meinhof Complex, or spectacular and usually forgettable slapstick. The film I saw this week was neither. Lulu und Jimi is a demonic fairytale with two star-crossed lovers pursued across the idyllic German countryside by a cavalcade of fiendish and grotesque baddies.

Nominated for a Grand Jury Prize at Sundance this year, Lulu und Jimi is set in 1959 in Schweinfurt, Bavaria, where the kids are obsessed with rock ‘n’ roll, and rebellion is in the air. Lulu (French actress Jennifer Decker) — the daughter of a bankrupt factory owner — meets Jimi (Ray Feardon, from the British soap operas Doctors and Coronation Street) at the funfair where he works the dodgems, and falls in love. Jimi’s tall, he’s handsome — and he’s black. This is only 14 years after the War, and a cross-racial love affair is too much for provincial Germany to handle. Lulu, who is earmarked for the dull and wealthy Ernst (Bastian Pastewka) whose millions will save the family business, rebels against her family, and the lovers hit the road.

Lulu’s diabolical mother, Gertrud (superbly played by Katrin Sass, best known to U.S. audiences for her performance in 2003’s Goodbye, Lenin), is in cahoots with a creepy psychiatrist (Hans-Michael Rehberg) who keeps her husband in a narcotic stupor. They plan to drug Lulu as well in order to marry her off to Ernst, so they send Gertrud’s malevolent chauffeur and lover, Schultz (suave veteran actor Udo Kier), to retrieve Lulu and get Jimi’s “balls on a plate.” He hires a hitman, Harry Hass (Ulrich Thomsen), a former Wehrmacht soldier. Hass is deeply menacing: “I had a girlfriend like you in Stalingrad. And do you know what I did with her? I shot her. And then I ate her.” Very nasty. The ensuing chase becomes increasingly macabre as the body count rises. This is not just the Brothers Grimm — it is the Brothers Grimmer.

All the gruesomeness is set against a backdrop of bubblegum colors, girls in ponytails and tulle petticoats, convertibles, ’50s bop, and exuberant rock and rolling. Decker is innocence personified — all wide-eyed looks and breathy smiles. Feardon is convincing as the brave Jimi, trying to make a plan to get himself and Lulu to the promised land — America. The chemistry between them is palpable — they laugh, dance, and seek protection in each other’s arms. In one scene, they sleep in a forest, like the Babes in the Wood, and wake up to see a deer. “That’s so beautiful,” breathes Lulu, “If there’s beauty like that in the world, then we must be safe, Jimi.”

This lightness worked for me, especially when contrasted with the dark second half of the film, but it comes with some seriously whimsical non-realism: Jimi’s hero, Daddy Cool, who rescued him from near-death as a child, now serenades him from the moon and, at the end of the film, turns out to be Lulu’s father. When Lulu and Jimi are separated, pink hearts appear in the sky to remind them of their love.

In Lulu und Jimi, writer-director Oskar Roehler shows a great comedic touch, a mastery of melodrama, the ability to evoke an era, and a fearless blend of whimsy and brutality — much like cult American director David Lynch. In the opening titles, Roehler thanks “David L.,” and the film’s premise — young lovers, a vicious mother, hitmen, a chase — pays homage to Lynch’s 1990 Wild At Heart. Watching any Lynch movie, you have the sense that he is playing with your mind, and I had the same feeling with Lulu und Jimi. This film is not deep, but it’s always going to surprise you.

Roehler said recently, in an interview with NDR Online, that in making Lulu und Jimi, he wanted to get away from heavily emotional relationship dramas. “For me, there are still crazy love stories that unfold with energy, are romantic and funny. With Lulu und Jimi, I wanted to make something that no one here has made — a bright firecracker that explodes with color but still has a good story as its foundation.”

He has succeeded: Lulu und Jimi is bold, funny, colorful, and romantic. It’s also dark and deeply weird…but it is a fairy-tale, and in fairy-tales, there are always happy endings.