Rock around the Bloc

>> The "Ost-algia" of Leander Haussman's Sun Alley

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

It's somehow appropriate that Leander Haussman's sweet coming-of-age comedy Sonnenallee, released here as Sun Alley, hit German cinemas on the eve of 1999's anniversary of Mauerfall--the Berlin Wall coming down.

The "Westies," West Germans (and by extension, the "free world"), saw Mauerfall as a victory, liberating their oppressed kinfolk across the barbed wire. While not exactly in disagreement, Sun Alley points out that for "Osties," citizens of the former DDR, it was also the end of an bittersweet era, one they could claim as uniquely their own. The film's protagonist, 17-year-old Micha, echoes Haussman's own press quotes: "It was the best time of my life. I was young and in love."

Set in the bell-bottomed '70s on a single block of Sonnenallee (an actual street that runs east to west through Berlin), Sun Alley follows gawky Micha, his buddy Mario and their posse in the desperate, adolescent pursuit of--freedom? Well, sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, anyway.

None of which are particularly easy to come by. We see teenagers lined up like Alphabet City junkies, coughing up a month's pay for a single contraband Stones album (with the "dealer" playing armchair critic in the process). We see them chugging a vile herbal asthma remedy to cop a buzz, in lieu of "real" hallucinogens. And we see the camera lens fog up whenever Micha lays eyes on his crush, the ridiculously foxy Miriam. Christ, those hot pants.

Kicks will be had, one way or another. Micha and Mario tease and badger Westie rubberneckers, work the dancefloor at a lame-o teen social and smart-mouth their way around thick-skulled authority figures. Gotta get the good times in--encroaching adulthood's put an expiry date on fun, for the most part.

Adult characters provide further yuks: Uncle Heinz and his creative pantyhose smuggling; stiff-necked neighbourhood warden Horkefeld (played by co-producer Detlev Buck); doofy checkpoint guards; even the weasel-faced neighbour everyone thinks is a Stasi agent. Each offer funny insights into the way things worked (or were, in theory, supposed to work) in the glorious German Democratic Republic.

Upon its release, many Osties claimed that the film's jokes, references and spirit of "Ost-algia" were beyond the grasp of the Westies. On the contrary; Sun Alley makes the Westies rethink their preconceptions of life "under the iron fist of totalitarianism." It's a two-way street; Micha and Mario run after a Westie tourist bus, sucking in their cheeks and howling "Hunger, hunger," while moments later, a teacher asks a tyke in which of the world's countries are people starving. "America, France and Scandinavia," she answers by rote.

The Communist environment Sun Alley presents isn't brutal and terrifying so much as dumb, clunky, exasperating and retroactively funny--sorta like the Mufta (multifunction table), the miracle of Red engineering that Micha's crabby dad does hopeless battle with in one sequence. A frustrating nuisance, the damn thing, but now it's gone and it won't be coming back.

Sun Alley screens at the Goethe-Institut on Thursday, April 5, 8pm and Friday, April 6, 6:30pm, $5