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Stratosphere Girl
Germany / UK / France / Switzerland / Italy 2004
produced by Karl Baumgartner, Christoph Friedel for Pandora Film
directed by Matthias X.Oberg
starring Chloé Winkel, Jon Yang, Rebecca R. Palmer, Tuva Novotny, Tara Elders, Linda Steinhoff, Filip Peeters, Togo Igawa, Peggy Jane de Schepper, Alan Westaway, Burt Kwouk, Mette Louise Holland, Monika Stzelczyk, Oona Spengler, Akemi Otani, Manuela Servais, Giselle Berk, Yuki Iwamoto, Eiji Kusuhara, Takuya Masumoto, Ryozo Kohira, Fay Susan Hartrey, Valerie Hamer, Julia Hamer, Verena Mundhenke, Jana Philomena Meister, Kinggan Xingan, Eerdungnengke, Uurtsaikh, Maximilian Vollmar
written by Matthias X.Oberg, music by Nils Petter Molvaer, comics drawn by Anne Kathrin Otto
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
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Because she has fallen in love with Yamamoto (Jon Yang), Belgian
graduate and wannabe comicbook artist Angela (Chloé Winkel) moves to
Tokyo to work at a club as a hostess, and she quickly becomes a success
with the predominantly Japanese customers - her being blond and looking
younger than her 18 years. Then though she learns about fellow hostess
Larissa (Peggy Jane de Schepper), whom she has never met, but who has gone
missing a few days before her arrival, and for whatever reason, she
decides to try to find out what has happened to her (and she suspects
Larissa was murdered pretty early on in her investigations). It's not an
easy task to track down a girl in Tokyo though when you a) don't speak any
Japanese, and b) hit a wall of silence with all of those who knew her.
Still, by having every bit and piece she has found out come to life in the
comic she's creating, she manages to put together what might have happened
and soon has found a baddie for her story: Kruilman (Filip Peeters), a
rich Westerner who likes to spend a fortune at the club she's working at.
Then though it turns out that Larissa actually might have been murdered by
Rachel (Rebecca R.Palmer), another hostess, but before Angela is able to
do anything, she is taken to the scene of the crime by Rachel and
Kruilman, drugged, and she already fears for the worst - but when she
wakes up from her drug-induced blackout, she finds Larissa very much
alive, hanging out with Rachel and Kruilman, and Angela herself receives a
suitcase of money for the comic she has drawn, a deal set into motion by
Yamamoto, the man she followed to Japan in the first place ... Visually, Stratosphere Girl is quite
stunning, subtly blending the comicbook Angela is drawing with her real
life experiences, as if breaking down a wall between the two worlds.
However, the film is not able to duplicate its visual qualities onto a story
level, as at its heart, the whole film is just a feeble murder mystery
with an unsatisfying ending that seems as if nobody has even tried, the
main character Angela completely lacks motivation for anything she's doing
(and her off-screen monologues that are supposed to come across as
mysterious but are nothing short of banal certainly don't help), and on
top of that, she completely fails to react emotionally to anything that
happens to her, to such an extent that one is just unable to identify with
her (and I'm sure that's not actress Chloé Winkel's fault, but the character was
written that way). That said, the film at least provides its audience
with a few pretty pictures ... but little else.
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