System Crasher review – firecracker portrait of unstable youth

Benni Klaaß sees pink when she screams. She also wears it, whenever she can. The nine-year-old girl, the eponymous firecracker of System Crasher, has ice-blonde hair and pale ivory skin, and is always dressed in something pink. A fleece, a hat, t-shirt. It’s her favourite colour, and the biggest warning sign. When her trauma is triggered, her vision and ours are clouded with pink.

Nora Fingscheidt’s explosive film refuses to put Benni in a box. The story follows the young girl as she spirals out of control and slaloms through various families, never being allowed to settle in a home. She has bursts of roaring energy, of dangerous emotion that is hard to control. Characters give her pills and stick wires to her pores, but the filmmaker never reduces her to labelled diagnoses.

System Crasher thrums with nervous feeling, but also hones crucial moments of calm. It’s unpredictable, like its protagonist – this is no superficial screaming match. But when Helena Zengel does yell, the 11-year-old actor masters overflowing rage with staggering depth, moving beyond generic fabricated displays of emotion into the realm of skin-prickling authenticity.

Zengel plays Benni with curiosity, with audacity and a sense of stubborn independence. Benni asks strangers how old they are, she carries babies who don’t know her, and there is nothing she won’t throw, or kick. But her anger is wholly justified. Her mother, who has two other children and a new partner, could no longer handle Benni’s mood swings, and so the young girl is now tossed from foster family to foster family. Resentment, naturally, grows – but also a sense of confusion, of abandonment, of deep loneliness and above all else, a yearning for love.

Benni manifests this yearning by investing in Micha, her school chaperone who takes her on an isolation vacation to a forest cabin. The pair get along, and once more between the tall trees, moments of silence and chaos intertwine sharply. Benni is wise beyond her years – she meets Micha’s family and asks him why he wasn’t better at using contraception. There’s plenty of humour like this, the sort that takes you by surprise and feels all the more rewarding for it.

There’s a spritely musical theme that weaves its way through System Crasher, one full of whistling that sounds as if played by magic pixies sewing their own kinetic story together. Every time the soundtrack returns, it’s like the pulsing of a human heart, flowing blood through every vein, keeping your eyes wide open against every next moment of anger or glee.

Sometimes System Crasher is fun, and sometimes it makes you feel sick. The film operates on a constant seesaw of extremes, as Benni crosses lines with horrific brutality at one turn, before retreating to comfort a crying carer at the next.

As a truthful portrait of a young person who is at once vulnerable and still so brilliant, System Crasher thrives, and earns a deep sense of urgency. There are no easy answers, and no sadistic misgivings or idealistic happy endings either. As the film reaches its close, things seem to be looking up for Benni. Once again, she’s broken the rules. People are chasing after her, furious over what she’s done. She’ll probably be in trouble. But right now? None of that matters. The sun is shining, her arms are wide open. It’s a beautiful day.

System Crasher is available on Curzon Home Cinema from 27 March.