Product: The Trio [VHS]
Rating: 4.0
3's a crowd
This German film directed by Hermine Huntgeburth is like a comic spin on The Grifters but with an added sexual component. When one of the 3 petty criminals who wallet snatch using the blind man ploy is injured in a chase, a replacement is chosen from someone who had tried to steal from them and had failed. His punishment was to be stripped by the two gay male members of the team, which prefigures the sexual triangle that eventuates when both the father and his daughter are attracted to the new member. We know that when we are told the group's rule is no exchange of body fluids that it is said to be broken. Huntgeburth gets comic mileage out of who is the the aggressor in each relationship and the stolen moments of intimacy they have in fear of being discovered by the third party. The most refreshing touch is how the father (Gotz George) is established as being mean to his gay partner, yet he becomes foolish when faced with the attentions of a younger man, as if he cannot believe it possible, and the Shakespearian appearance of George emphasises him as a classically defined pathetic figure. George actually resembles a brunette and heavy-set Ralph Fiennes. The daughter probably has the least interesting role, but Felix Eitner as the boy demonstrates the bisexual trend of modern sexuality, the free sexual preference of European men, and the question of sex as duplicitious behaviour. When Eitner's pet snake is disposed of cruelly, Huntgeburth sets up an expectation for his own fate, with the snake as metaphor. The accordian music of Niki Reiser sets the tone with it's melancholy and suggestion of exotic mischief, and thankfully Huntgeburth's treatment lacks the concluding cruelty of the Stephen Frears title.