This is a somewhat perplexing film as, on paper, it shouldn't be nearly as entertaining as it ends up being. Because, yes, everything you've read about this film is correct: For a large majority of the running time, nothing much happens. At least, on the surface. Director Eckhart Schmidt manages to pack his film with such intense nuance that even the most surface level encounters become meaningful.
"The Fan" follows a teenaged girl named Simone, portrayed by the beautiful Désirée Nosbusch, who is obsessed with the pop singer "R." She doesn't attend school, or eat, or talk with her parents; she doesn't hang out with friends or date boys. Instead, she finds herself at the post office nearly every day, asking the poor workers if R has answered any one of the hundreds of letters she has sent them. Simone's fixation with R is obviously past anyone's notion of a healthy crush, but Désirée's performance is so tender that you will honestly start to find yourself sympathizing with her unrequited love. Désirée is a woman of few words in this film - instead, she does most of her acting through her facial expressions, and most notably, through her eyes. You can feel her frustration, passion, anger, sadness, lust, and you can feel it all by looking at her face. Her performance is pretty masterful here, as it's not to be underestimated how difficult it is to act without speaking. So, you will begin to almost feel a sense of romance at Simone's innocent preoccupation with R - and once they finally meet, you will certainly hope that love starts to spark between them.
Alas, if you're reading this review, you know that does not happen and, as such, "The Fan" turns into a portrait of severe mental illness. When R has sex with Simone and immediately afterward gives her the cold shoulder, Simone bludgeons him to death, chops him up, licks his blood off the floor, cooks his dismembered body parts, eats him, and grinds his bones into ask to scatter later on. It is a shocking climax, to say the least, but more than that, it is artfully, skillfully done. Director Eckhart Schmidt films everything in such a way to be less gratuitous and more character building - the entire movie has been building to this, and so, during this sequence, the camera stays heavily focused on Simone. You watch her commit these atrocities, but the film still stays restrained; there is not an overabundance on blood or gore at all. And in fact, there is a noticeable lack of blood. Instead, these scenes of violence are used more-so to convey information about Simone and the type of person she is and has become - what started as an innocent crush morphed into full-blown murder when the fantasy she has built up in her head didn't match the cold reality of what occurred.
Toward the beginning of this review I mentioned that nothing much happens in this movie for a large part of the running time, but that isn't necessarily true. As you watch Simone travel from place to place, you see her interactions with men who wrong her, from random strangers who offer her a ride in exchange for sex (and when denied, they attempt to force themselves upon her), to the men at the postoffice who laugh at her and ignore her, to even her own father who may or may not sexually assault her, depending on how you view the specific scene. Men constantly let her down, so much so that when the man she thought she was in love with doesn't meet her expectations, the only solution she could think of was to murder and eat him. And in fact, the only man who seemed semi-decent was her classmate who was obviously interested in her, but instead of reciprocating his feelings, Simone pushed him away. And it's precisely this rejection of reality to cling to an unattainable fantasy that makes "The Fan" so exciting and intriguing to watch. You get to see Simone's downfall and will almost empathize with how she got there, without, of course, condoning her ultimate actions. And all of this character-building and story progression is accompanied by a really cool musical score that pulses a dreamlike quality into the movie.
There's a lot to enjoy about "The Fan" besides its violent conclusion. The slow, deliberate pace enables you to really soak in and bask in the characters, the world, and the story so that by the time the climax occurs, you'll have had an adequate amount of time to digest and understand who you're watching, why they're behaving the way they're behaving, and how their descent occurred. While I imagine many may be bored by the slower pace, I really enjoyed myself with this one, and ever since watching it, it's become all I can think about. If you're into niche, old school horror, give this one a go.
"The Fan" follows a teenaged girl named Simone, portrayed by the beautiful Désirée Nosbusch, who is obsessed with the pop singer "R." She doesn't attend school, or eat, or talk with her parents; she doesn't hang out with friends or date boys. Instead, she finds herself at the post office nearly every day, asking the poor workers if R has answered any one of the hundreds of letters she has sent them. Simone's fixation with R is obviously past anyone's notion of a healthy crush, but Désirée's performance is so tender that you will honestly start to find yourself sympathizing with her unrequited love. Désirée is a woman of few words in this film - instead, she does most of her acting through her facial expressions, and most notably, through her eyes. You can feel her frustration, passion, anger, sadness, lust, and you can feel it all by looking at her face. Her performance is pretty masterful here, as it's not to be underestimated how difficult it is to act without speaking. So, you will begin to almost feel a sense of romance at Simone's innocent preoccupation with R - and once they finally meet, you will certainly hope that love starts to spark between them.
Alas, if you're reading this review, you know that does not happen and, as such, "The Fan" turns into a portrait of severe mental illness. When R has sex with Simone and immediately afterward gives her the cold shoulder, Simone bludgeons him to death, chops him up, licks his blood off the floor, cooks his dismembered body parts, eats him, and grinds his bones into ask to scatter later on. It is a shocking climax, to say the least, but more than that, it is artfully, skillfully done. Director Eckhart Schmidt films everything in such a way to be less gratuitous and more character building - the entire movie has been building to this, and so, during this sequence, the camera stays heavily focused on Simone. You watch her commit these atrocities, but the film still stays restrained; there is not an overabundance on blood or gore at all. And in fact, there is a noticeable lack of blood. Instead, these scenes of violence are used more-so to convey information about Simone and the type of person she is and has become - what started as an innocent crush morphed into full-blown murder when the fantasy she has built up in her head didn't match the cold reality of what occurred.
Toward the beginning of this review I mentioned that nothing much happens in this movie for a large part of the running time, but that isn't necessarily true. As you watch Simone travel from place to place, you see her interactions with men who wrong her, from random strangers who offer her a ride in exchange for sex (and when denied, they attempt to force themselves upon her), to the men at the postoffice who laugh at her and ignore her, to even her own father who may or may not sexually assault her, depending on how you view the specific scene. Men constantly let her down, so much so that when the man she thought she was in love with doesn't meet her expectations, the only solution she could think of was to murder and eat him. And in fact, the only man who seemed semi-decent was her classmate who was obviously interested in her, but instead of reciprocating his feelings, Simone pushed him away. And it's precisely this rejection of reality to cling to an unattainable fantasy that makes "The Fan" so exciting and intriguing to watch. You get to see Simone's downfall and will almost empathize with how she got there, without, of course, condoning her ultimate actions. And all of this character-building and story progression is accompanied by a really cool musical score that pulses a dreamlike quality into the movie.
There's a lot to enjoy about "The Fan" besides its violent conclusion. The slow, deliberate pace enables you to really soak in and bask in the characters, the world, and the story so that by the time the climax occurs, you'll have had an adequate amount of time to digest and understand who you're watching, why they're behaving the way they're behaving, and how their descent occurred. While I imagine many may be bored by the slower pace, I really enjoyed myself with this one, and ever since watching it, it's become all I can think about. If you're into niche, old school horror, give this one a go.