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The Nasty Girl

Play trailer Poster for The Nasty Girl PG-13 1990 1h 33m Comedy Drama Play Trailer Watchlist
Watchlist Tomatometer Popcornmeter
57% Tomatometer 7 Reviews 74% Popcornmeter 1,000+ Ratings
Loosely based on a true story, this German film follows Sonja (Lena Stolze), a small-town teen, as she enters an essay contest and ends up researching her city's involvement with the Third Reich. While the town has a reputation for resisting Nazi influence, Sonja discovers that many locals actually collaborated with the Gestapo and had deep roots within the Third Reich. Eventually, Sonja's investigation leads some citizens to try to block her efforts to uncover the truth.

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The Nasty Girl

Critics Reviews

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Jonathan Rosenbaum Chicago Reader 05/24/2022
2/4
The Nasty Girl is a movie of figureheads, not characters. Go to Full Review
Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times 01/01/2000
2.5/4
It's the film's style that I object to. The story itself is fascinating, but the style seems to add another tone, a level of irony that is somehow confusing. Go to Full Review
Juan Carlos Coto Miami Herald 08/16/2021
3/4
The Nasty Girl is about the power of history and everyone's own brand of personal repression. Yes, it's a universal tale, and at the same time that it enlightens it gives you a chill. Go to Full Review
Emanuel Levy EmanuelLevy.Com 02/19/2011
B-
Germany's Oscar nominated film is an intriguing but flawed tale of a Bavarian girl who digs into the past and reveals undesirable facts about her town's "respectale" citizens during the Nazi era. Go to Full Review
Carol Cling Las Vegas Review-Journal 08/22/2003
5/5
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat Spirituality & Practice 07/20/2003
Tells the true story of a Bavarian girl's quest to find out the truth about her small village's history during World War II Go to Full Review
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Audience Reviews

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03/30/2014 Although it's a tough topic, its sto?y-telling style is enjoyable. See more 03/06/2014 A young woman investigates her Bavarian village and it's people's involvement during the Second World War and the townsfolk turn on her. It's a little too art house for my personal taste but a rather unique experience. I probably wouldn't watch it again though. See more 09/26/2013 An oddly cheeky and eccentric glance at the most sobering subject of the last century: the assent of ordinary German people to the monstrosity of Nazism. The film is a stylistic and tonal mess, a jarring blend of Brecht, Woody Allen and Michael Haneke. Some scenes play out choppy, funny Amelie-style back story. Others have a curiously stagey, spotlit feel with back-projected black and white backgrounds. Extreme close-ups are suddenly employed, along with the odd moment of magic realism. There are moments of slapstick. The rest of the film is reasonably realistic, with the more appropriate tension of an journalistic investigation drama. The style ruins the substance and you never really get a chance to empathise with either the title character or those surrounding her or indeed the Jewish victims she is supposedly campaigning to vindicate. Ebert's verdict is spot on: "There is a story to be told here, but somehow you have to see straight through the movie to find it." See more 10/06/2012 The original Erin Brokovich, a spunky underdog. A Bavarian black comedy. See more 01/30/2012 Not particularly a valuable addition to the film canon about the Nazi period. See more 01/10/2012 It's a hard balance of satire and serious content that's achieved in the film as a young woman throughout years of research and secrets tries to determine what happened in her village during the occupation of the Third Reich. The only flaws come in starting to shift the narrative perspective about halfway through the film and the extremely abrupt ending. See more Read all reviews
The Nasty Girl

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Movie Info

Synopsis Loosely based on a true story, this German film follows Sonja (Lena Stolze), a small-town teen, as she enters an essay contest and ends up researching her city's involvement with the Third Reich. While the town has a reputation for resisting Nazi influence, Sonja discovers that many locals actually collaborated with the Gestapo and had deep roots within the Third Reich. Eventually, Sonja's investigation leads some citizens to try to block her efforts to uncover the truth.
Director
Michael Verhoeven
Producer
Helmut Rasp, Michael Senftleben
Distributor
Miramax Films
Rating
PG-13
Genre
Comedy, Drama
Original Language
German
Release Date (Theaters)
Feb 15, 1990, Original
Release Date (Streaming)
Jan 5, 2016
Box Office (Gross USA)
$54.0K
Runtime
1h 33m
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