Rome 1943: Israel's (Giorgio Tirabassi) circus is bombed to smithereens in an air raid, and now he and his performers - super-strong beastman Fulvio (Claudio Santamaria), Cencio (Pietro Castellitto) with the talent to control insects, magnetic clown Mario (Giancarlo Martini) and Matilde the electroshock girl (Aurora Giovinazzo) - decide to emigrate to America. And while Fulvio goes to secure a passage, the others are to stay put - but Fulvio doesn't return, and the others but Matilde think he has abandoned them. Thus they decide to join the Circus Berlin, all but Matilde. Circus Berlin's biggest attraction is Franz (Franz Rogowski), the twelve-fingered pianist - but Franz is actually much more than that, he can see into the future, and he predicts the fall of the Third Reich ... which is disaster for him, a passionate Nazi, so he looks for a way to change the future, and has a vision of four heroes with superpowers. So when Fulvio, Cencio and Mario ask for employment at the circus they're whisked away to Franz's secret lab where they're experimented on ...

Matilde meanwhile has fled from the Nazis into a nearby forest where she's welcomed by a pocket of crippled resistance fighters who want her to use her powers in a raid - but she refuses to kill, so the raid on a fleet of drugs carrying Jews to deportation fails. But at least Matilde learns Israel's fate as he's on one of the buses. Matilde decides to fetch her friends from the Circus Berlin to help her save Israel - but instead she becomes Franz's captive, and he wants to present her and her friends to the audience as the saviours of the Third Reich by having them demonstrate their skills when attacked by a tiger. Instead of electro-shocking the tiger though, Matilde tames him. Soon after, she, Fulvio, Cencio and Mario manage to escape and ultimately stop the train that's to carry Israel to a concentration camp in Germany - but they're ambushed by Franz and a German battalion - who are in turn ambushed by the crippled resistance fighters, and in that endfight, Matilde finally uses her powers to wipe away all the Nazis ...

A weird combination of a film, as it starts out a piece of magical realism that might lean a little too far on circus kitsch, then veers into the grotesque while the finale feels like a superhero origin movie - and interestingly, the longer it goes the better the film gets, as in the beginning it looks way too much as a historical that's bogged down by its imagery that goes out of its way to deliver everything in good taste. And that it takes itself dead seriously doesn't help one bit there. But over time, irony sneaks into the proceedings almost naturally, and the more the film admits to itself it's just a genre movie - a bit along the lines of Wizard of Oz, the original Star Wars trilogy, or even The Fantastic Four, in terms of protagonists - the more it's at ease with itself, and Franz Rogowski sure makes a good comicbook villain. Now all that doesn't make Freaks Out a great movie, it's just a bit too clichéed in both story and characters, it's a tiny bit pretentious given its run-of-the-mill story, and at 140 or so minutes its somewhat over-long by a good hour. But all that said, the film sure has its moments.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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