Das Schreckliche Mädchen (Michael Verhoeven, 1990)

Michael Verhoeven is a director clearly somewhat preoccupied with the shadow of Nazism, as evidenced by his take on the Sophie Scholl story as far back as 1982 in The White Rose, as well as other works lesser known abroad. In The Nasty Girl he only superficially fictionalises the mission of a young Bavarian woman to expose uncomfortable truths about what went on in her home town during the war. It soon becomes clear from the obstructions and hostility she meets in her investigations that 40 years later, now in the midst of the Cold War, is too soon to start rocking a fragile boat.
So far, standard enough. Where Verhoeven succeeds, though, is in making the teenage crusader no angel: she's at turns coquettish and strident, downright irritating in fact, constantly mugging the camera with mock surprise or self-congratulatory squeals. That she still remains sympathetic as well owes a lot to Lena Stolze's ebullient performance, and the director's box of cinematic tricks, with frequent artificial backdrops and deliberately bizarre cutaways, mostly works to move things along in a refreshingly idiosyncratic manner too. Maybe the quirks do end up detracting from the depth of the message, but it works well as cinema, which is rare with the well-worn topic.

7/10