Review:
"The German Doctor"
![]() Release Date: May 16, 2014
Rating: PG-13 Running Time: 94 minutes Few things scare a parent more than learning that their child—born or unborn—will lead an unhealthy life. It’s this fear that drives The German Doctor, a chilling 1960s-set drama that examines the unusual relationship between the family that owns a hotel in Patagonia and one of their guests, Àlex Brendemühl’s slightly creepy physician and suspected war criminal. Brendemühl’s interest in human genetics prompt him to treat a 12-year-old girl (Florencia Bado) whom he believes is suffering from stunted growth. While Bado’s father (Diego Peretti) views the physician with suspicious, his wife (Natalia Oreiro) is open to their daughter receiving a regiment of growth-hormone injections. Taught by German educators, Bado’s mother trusts the physician not just with her daughter but also the twins she is carrying. Writer/director Lucía Puenzo creates an air of mystery around the physician that hangs heavy over The German Doctor. Is his concern for Bado real? Or is his interest in her purely academic? The unsettling presence of the enigmatic Brendemühl only heightens the tension that surrounds the battle for Bado and the unborn twins. At the same time, Puenzo gives us some clues about the physician’s past and why he is treated with reverence by many of the Germans living in exile in Patagonia. The more we learn about the physician, the more intriguing his home away from home becomes. Puenzo takes us into a community within a community, with the former stuck in the Fatherland’s glory days and the latter willing to open its arms to those who may have committed crimes against humanity. The German Doctor demands that a price must be paid for allowing the monsters that live among us to roam free, one that unfortunately must also be borne by the innocent. Robert Sims Aired: May 15, 2014 Web site: http://thegermandoctorfilm.com/ |
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