ANATOMIE (2000 - HORROR / THRILLER / MYSTERY) **1/2 out of *****
(And they say that the Health Care system is going to shit in America...)
CAST: Franka Potente, Benno Fuhrman, Anna Loos, Holger Speckhaan, Sebastian Blomberg, Traugott Buhre.
DIRECTORS: Stefan Ruzowitsky
WARNING: Some SPOILERS and some damn good reasons to stay out of German medical schools - straight ahead...
IT'S LIKE THIS: A few years ago, an acquaintance decided to apply to a medical school in Germany to further her studies. Why go all the way to Europe for that? Well, for starters, American medical schools are expensive as shit, and she wasn't too crazy about being buried in student loans until she was 90. And it turned out that the med school in Germany was going to be ridiculously cheap - if not almost free. Anyhow, she got accepted, and before you know it, she was on her way to Krautland to learn how to be a doctor. I mean, low-cost-almost-free med school? Who wouldn't jump on that?
Well, quite frankly, anyone who has seen our next review. You see, our next flick is the German horror flick, ANATOMIE. It is set in a Heidelberg medical school where some truly fucked-up things are going on. I bet if my acquaintance had seen this flick in time, there is no way in hell she would have gone through with her decision. Damn, I hope she's still alive.
ANATOMIE's heroine is the lovely Paula Henning (Franka Potente). Paula is one of those earnest, goody-goody types who wants to go into medicine to help the sick and change the world. Instead of, you know, getting filthy rich and going on golf vacations and switching out Jaguar convertibles every two years or so. Nope, not our Paula. She comes from a long line of noble, non-descript doctors and just wants - altogether now - "to make a difference." Go, girl. Puke.
Anyhow, Paula's gets off to great start by winning admission to that famed (and soon to be infamous) medical school in Heidelberg. Apparently, the alumni of the school have all gone on to greater things. If they survive, that is. Because, you see, the place has got a higher body count than your typical FRIDAY THE 13th movie. Which is kind of convenient, because the classes never run out of cadavers to dissect - there are always a few new ones every two days or so. But before we discuss that, let's talk about some of the fellow students and teachers that Paula encounters in this Medical School From Hell, er, Heidelberg.
They are: (1) Gretchen (Anna Loos), slutty whore who is supposed to be some kind of medical genius but literally can't think of anything else except dicks and balls and cum (ahem); (2) Caspar (Sebastian Blomberg), hot dark-haired guy whom Paula develops googly-eyes for (can't say I blame her - he looks like Sebastian Blomberg); (3) Phil (Holger Speckhaan), hot geeky guy whom Gretchen likes to fuck; (4) Dr. Grombek (Traugott Buhre), head of the medical program at the school who may or may not be a baddie; (5) Gaby (Antonia Cacilia Holfelder), plain and plump chick who probably won't get anywhere near as much cock as Gretchen The Whore during their stay at Heidelberg; (6) Davide (Arndt Schwering-Sohnrey) dude with a weak heart who probably won't be hanging around for long - if you know what I mean; and last but certainly the freakiest: (7) Heinie (Benno Fuhrman), overly serious snobby muscleboy who seems unaware that his name means "ass" in the United States - and should just lighten the fuck up. And, yes, Gretchen The Tramp likes to fuck him, too.
At any rate, things at the school are fine for, like, three minutes or so. Then Davide mysteriously dies and winds up as a cadaver in Paula's anatomy class. This naturally freaks out our heroine, especially considering she & that Gretchen The Slut just had coffee with Davide the day before - and he seemed fine. So why is Davide now on the slab, colder than Frosty The Snowman's dick? How did he die? Then, as if that's not fucked-up enough, Paula starts playing Nancy Drew and investigates the history of the med school. She soon discovers that the place used to be the stomping grounds of a now-defunct secret society called the AAA.
No, folks... By AAA, I don't mean the car service/automobile club that will rescue you anytime you have a flat without a spare while on a road trip, or if you lock your keys in the car because you are too distracted by the hot cop checking parking meters down the block. Nope, this AAA is a nastier bunch. AAA stands for "Aga Actabile Antihippocrate." Which basically translates to "A bunch of bloodthirsty doctors who conduct illegal and unethical experiments to further medical research." And what's even worse - Paula starts to suspect that AAA may not have been disbanded after all. Instead, they may have gone even deeper underground - but have never left Heidelberg, or ceased their sinister activities of kidnapping folks and performing heinous operations on them. All in the name of - ahem - "research."
Is the AAA still active? If so, are they responsible for killing Davide? Who else have they kidnapped and killed? Are they killing people just to have more corpses to experiment on? Or do the AAA have some sort of darker agenda? Who among the students and teachers are secret members? Heinie the Ass? Caspar the Hottie? Gaby The Spinster? Phil The Geek? Dr. Grombek the Fat Scientist? Gretchen The Sperm Bank? Who can Paula trust? Will the AAA kill her for digging too deep and discovering too much?
Let's just say that I hope my acquaintance doesn't decide to go play Nancy Drew at her med school in Germany. Who knows what the fuck she may uncover...
BUT, SERIOUSLY: Within the Horror, Mystery, & Thriller Genres, there is a Sub-Genre known as the Medical Thriller. We've had some strong examples of this sub-genre over the years. In COMA (1978), Genevieve Bujold played a doctor who caught on to a pattern of coma cases within a respected Boston hospital - and found herself in serious danger when she linked the cases to a widespread conspiracy involving organ harvesting perpetrated by some very high-powered people. COMA was recently remade as a mini-series on cable TV, and the result was a solid thriller - but not as good as the 1978 original, which was more taut and suspenseful.
Then in 1986, we had the surreal, atmospheric NOMADS, wherein Lesley-Anne Down played an L.A. doctor who treats a dying patient (Pierce Brosnan) - only to have the "memory" of his last few days "transfer" to her mind before he dies, which places her in danger from the supernatural entities that caused his death. Then there was MALICE in 1993, the Aaron Sorkin-scripted medical malpractice thriller that had more twist & turns than a mountain road in Hawaii - and a truly riveting soliloquy by Alec Baldwin's egomaniacal surgeon character. Three words: "I am God."
In 1996, EXTREME MEASURES came out - and it was basically a reworking of the COMA plot: a British doctor (Hugh Grant in an atypically serious role) in an NYC hospital becomes suspicious when several corpses disappear from the morgue, pushing him to dig deeper - and follow a trail right to the doorstep of a famous surgeon (Gene Hackman) who may be the head of a medical conspiracy.
Now, we have the German film ANATOMIE. Like COMA, NOMADS, and EXTREME MEASURES, this movie has a protagonist who is a doctor. And like those films, the protagonist follows a trail of clues that leads him/her down a very sinister path. The problem with ANATOMIE is that it can't decide whether it wants to be a medical mystery/thriller or yet another SCREAM slasher clone wherein a psycho killer cuts his way through a cast of beautiful people.
Unlike NOMADS, which started out as a medical thriller then increasingly became eerier and eerier until it fully abandoned logic and embraced the supernatural/mythic mystery at the story's core (leading to a stunning and unforgettably creepy finale), ANATOMIE tries to have its cake and eat it, too. It keeps jumping back and forth between the medical conspiracy plot thread and the psycho-killer plot thread - and ends up short-changing both. This is the main reason the film rates no higher than *** (above average). Had the script been rewritten to favor either the medical conspiracy angle or slasher angle, it might have been an outright good film. Instead it is merely your usual SCREAM wannabe - and not as strong as the Medical Thrillers mentioned above. And that's too bad, because ANATOMIE has a potentially intriguing premise that, had it been handled right, could have turned the film into a classic thriller.
The primary reason the film keeps from being below average is a strong turn by lead Franka Potente. Potente starred in this film before she gained international stardom as Marie in THE BOURNE IDENTITY & its sequels - and its easy to see why she hit the big-time. She has the valuable asset of being able to make silence and expressions speak volumes. This comes in very handy when playing characters who are mostly interior and not too expressive, the way Paula Henning is. A lesser actress might have turned Paula into a boring, one-note goody two-shoes, but Potente instead gives her nuance and dimension. Without Potente's performance, ANATOMIE would have easily sunk below the average mark.
The story starts out strong, echoing COMA's "innocent-woman-slowly-sniffs-out-a-conspiracy" premise. Unfortunately, just when the plot starts to heat up and hint at an intense second half, the movie goes down a trite path that undercuts the threat. At this point the film becomes more and more like all the slashers that came out in the wake of SCREAM's release in 1996. Basically, we have a psychotic character going around knocking off most of the cast. The plot tries to attribute his motivation to medical research, but this ploy is unconvincing and the promising set-up for exploring the Aga Actabile Antihippocrate secret society is pretty much abandoned in the third act. Instead, we get extended cat-and-mouse chase scenes between the killer and Paula through the darkened medical school. While these long sequences are fairly tense and well-shot, they are hampered by the bombastic and histrionic music that plays over it. Shame, too, because the musical score is overall pretty decent. But the piece that is used for the penultimate and final chase scenes is so over-the-top, it kills some of the suspense.
Another reason the film lags behind others in its sub-genre (including ANATOMIE 2 which came out a few years later - and is a much better film) is because the characters (aside from Paula Henning) are just not that interesting. Anna Loos is okay as Gretchen, but she doesn't really give the role any shadings or nuance the way Potente does with Paula. Instead, Gretchen is your basic "slutty" character. Everyone keeps saying how "smart" she is - but we never really see any evidence of that. Benno Fuhrmann is handsome and creepy as the killer Hein, but as with Loos and Gretchen, he doesn't do anything unexpected or new with his part. Sebastian Blomberg is a little better as the mysterious Caspar, who may have his own agenda for being at the school, but he doesn't get much screen time until the climax - when he is basically imperiled and Paula has to rescue him. Had Caspar been developed more and given more scenes, it might have improved the film. Then there's Holger Speckhaan as Phil, who barely even registers a personality so there isn't much that can be said about him.
Compared to its sequel, ANATOMIE has characters that don't seem much more than your basic "slasher stereotypes." Only Potente rises above the cliches. In ANATOMIE 2, each of the characters has nuance and shading, and are a more colorful and interesting bunch. ANATOMIE 2 also knows exactly what kind of film it wants to be: a taut, suspenseful medical thriller - which puts it streets ahead of the ANATOMIE, which doesn't know if it's a slasher film or medical mystery. By the second film, writer-director Stefan Ruzowitsky (who helmed both ANATOMIE 1 & 2) seemed to have learned his lesson. Good thing, too.
