Dir. Frank Rippoloh, West Germany, 1980, 95 mins
Cast: Frank Rippoloh, Bernd Broaderup
Review by Carlie Newman
A re-issue of this, the first explicit, openly gay themed film to get wide distribution, still astonishes with its explicit depiction of men involved in sexual acts. Filmed just before the world found out about the AIDS virus, it shows the real lifestyle of Frank (played and narrated by the director Frank Rippoloh). By day Frank is a competent and dedicated primary school teacher. But at night he cruises Berlin’s toilets, clubs and porn cinemas.
It is at one of the latter that he meets cinema usher Bernd (Broadrup, who plays himself). Bernd wants to settle down with Frank and lead a quieter domestic life; he even contemplates moving to a provincial town in the countryside. Although Frank loves Bernd, he finds it impossible to give up his promiscuous lifestyle and continues to enjoy the excitement of chance encounters and lovemaking with strangers that he is used to. He hopes that Bernd can join in with the random sex or at least watch him experiment with whoever he finds, but Bernd remains miserable about Frank’s activities.
Frank keeps his day job completely separate from his evening and night time activities. The only time they come together is when we see Frank marking his pupils’ homework while sitting on the stall in a public toilet awaiting a partner. There is some humour and a lot of explicit male sex shots as we see Frank engaged in the sexual acts that keep him feeling alive after his day at work. The two main actors bring their own feelings into their parts and act naturally. We feel sorry for sensitive Bernd as he arrives home to find his partner involved in sex with a stranger. Frank shows his two sides well and scenes with the teacher and his school colleagues are interspersed with sexual scenes. This subtlety is perhaps the result of the film’s autobiographical nature, in that Rippoleh is acting out experiences from his own life.
This remarkable film was a scandal when it first came out and there was a real danger of prosecution because of the graphic sex scenes. It has moments that will still shock some of us – there are some very direct close ups – and there is no need at all to use one’s own imagination as the director shows everything.
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