Germany, the late Sixties. There is revolution in the air, students rioting in the streets and left-wing radicals looking to subvert the status quo. In the midst of this charged atmosphere, louche drifter Thomas (Marquard Bohm) saunters into a swinging nightclub where he is reunited with an old flame: Peggy (the astoundingly beautiful Uschi Obermaier), a flirty free spirit in a sexy short skirt. He spends the night round her place which she shares with three groovy girlfriends. While Thomas sleeps, Sylvie (Sylvia Kekulé) and Christine (Diana Körner) summon Peggy to a backroom where Isolde (Gaby Go) has a middle-aged lover (Don Wahl) bound and gagged, but can’t bring herself to kill him. So Peggy nonchalantly shoots him dead. It transpires she and her fellow man-eaters have formed a feminist commune where men are kept alive for five days of free-love fun and games, then brutally disposed of on the sixth. Thomas is blissfully unaware how little time he has left.
Often tagged a science fiction film, more likely down to its air of unreality than any attempt to seem futuristic, Rote Sonne (Red Sun) is closer to the kind of savage surrealistic satire being practiced by Jean-Luc Godard at the time. In films from Breathless (1959) to Pierrot le fou (1965) reaffirms his thesis that men and women are drawn together by biological imperatives, but the psychological gulf between the sexes remains insurmountable. Rudolf Thorne and scriptwriter Max Zihlman mount a more extreme variation on this viewpoint whilst attempting to skewer such hot-button topics as radical feminism and counterculture terrorism, but the former’s detached direction coupled with the oddly impenetrable relationship at the heart of the story fails to engage in what proves a fairly muddled though entertaining piece of agit-prop.
Far and away the film’s most notable aspect is the captivating presence of Uschi Obermaier, the celebrated model, musician, actress and activist who alongside her boyfriend, Rainer Langhans, was a key member of the German counterculture. A pop culture icon in Germany to this day, her turbulent life was depicted in the recent biopic Das wilde Leben (2007) (The Wild Girl) released overseas as Eight Miles High, but she starred in handful of her own movies including Thorne’s earlier Detektive (1968). Indeed, Obermaier was instrumental in getting Rote Sonne off the ground, as the studio insisted she be the star. Yet beneath the countercultural surface and the iconic poster image of Uschi with a big gun and chic little white mini-dress (a provocative intermingling of sexual allure and violent death), the film harbours some dishearteningly conservative messages.
Thorne and Zihlman, who collaborated on other oddball fantasies like Supergirl - Das Madchen von den Sternen (1971) starring Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Eddie Constantine and the time travel comedy Tigerstripe Baby is Waiting for Tarzan (1998), seemingly mount an attack on the sexual poltics of the day, as their heroines treat men in the same disposable manner to which they have grown accustomed. However, glum, ambivalent hero Thomas muddies the argument. A borderline alcoholic prone to pseudo-intellectual pronouncements (“The rhythm of life is important. Work stands as a contradiction to that.” After which, Peggy correctly pegs him as “lazy”), he constantly quizzes the girls about their sexual habits and seems genuinely appalled - despite flirting with all of them. “You have too many men”, he bluntly tells Sylvie. Having abandoned his wife and child (nice guy, huh?), Thomas attempts to cajole Peggy into joining his expedition to the Himalayas. He maintains he loves her, but says so with such little feeling it is wonder what Peggy sees in this sadsack. Inexplicably, Isolde then takes a shine to Thomas but he reacts to revelations of his imminent fate with typical nonchalance, mostly moping about, smoking and downing endless whiskeys.
What the film has going for it is a nice line in dry humour, culminating in an absurdist shootout in the woods. Thorne’s languid, conversational approach undermines what should have been a taut, provocative comedy-thriller, but Uschi outshines the material with undeniable charisma.
