Enfant Terrible review – Fassbinder biopic is mostly by-the-numbers

There are myriad accounts of the man who made Ali: Fear Eats the Soul already out there, but if Oskar Roehler’s Cannes-selected biopic Enfant Terrible is anything to go by, the German auteur Rainer Werner Fassbinder was every bit the petulant man-child that the film’s title implies. Much of the film’s two-hours-and-change are punctuated with Fassbinder’s – played by Oliver Masucci (who put in a fun turn as a Hitler pastiche in the controversial Baron Cohen-esque satire Guess Who’s Back) – barbiturate-loaded ravings. The film boasts some inspired stylistic flourishes, but this is a largely by-the-numbers affair, though it wins points for refusing to shy away from the filmmaker’s extremities.

It’s the late sixties: a young Fassbinder, already rocking his favoured leather jacket and wide-rimmed glasses combo, is the director of a low-budget play. His actors, far from seasoned professionals, show little in the way of imagination, and so he despairs, already chain-smoking his way, no doubt, into the heart attack that would eventually kill him.

The dominant air of a peevish genius hangs in the air, clinging to the smoke that rises from the tip of his cigarette (this is the first of a few odd motifs: one wonders if there is a single scene in the film’s first forty-five minutes in which Fassbinder is not clinging to a fag). Wooing producers with his abundant machismo, he moves onto the film business – “I already wrote three movies and have four in my head,” he says, because of course he does – and churns out second-rate pictures like an artistic conveyor belt.

There are some things to appreciate, here: though you get the sense that Oliver Masucci has been limited by Enfant Terrible’s schematic script, he puts in a fine performance as Fassbinder, thrashing around like a crazed silverback, smashing up hotel foyers in Cannes, blowing contemptuous smoke in the faces of his foes. Yes, it can feel obnoxious, evoking the most shrill intonations of Bruno Ganz’s famous Hitler, but one wonders if that’s such a bad thing – Masucci has fun with it, and besides which, that his Fassbinder is constantly ramped up to eleven sets him apart from yet another austere prestige-grab.

Elsewhere, Roehler puts in a good shift as the film’s production designer, explicitly evoking the theatrical artifice of Fassbinder’s final (and best) film, Querelle; the sets are cheap and cheerful, composed of roughshod facades. It’s probably a compelling enough watch for the Letterboxd crowd, but it’s doubtful that Enfant Terrible will resonate outside of the festival circuit.

Enfant Terrible was screened as part of the BFI Flare: London LGBTIQ+ Film Festival 2021. A UK release date is yet to be announced.