Madonna is among the brightest stars attending this year's Berlin International Film Festival, and a flock of fans and paparazzi has trailed her every move since she arrived in the city on Tuesday. But not all of the attention has been doting. Critics were lukewarm to her directorial debut, and Wednesday she was booed by fans before the film's worldwide premier.
Hundreds of people lined barriers around the Zoo Palast movie theater on Wednesday evening, waiting for Madonna to walk the red carpet before the worldwide premier of "Filth and Wisdom," her first film as a director.
Madonna showed up around 9 p.m. and was greeted by a deafening chorus of elated shrieks. But the mood among the diehard Material Girl devotees turned sour when she spent just four minutes signing autographs. As she disappeared into the cinema, she was trailed by loud boos.
Inside, she fared better -- fans lucky enough to land tickets to the premier gave her a standing ovation even before the film began.
The film had sold out quickly, and on Wednesday tickets were going for 70 euros ($102) on the online auction Web site eBay. The film is the story of three London roommates scrapping to make ends meet as they dream of bigger things.
The reaction of German critics who previewed the film before the premier was far less glowing than that of Madonna's fans in the theater.
"The consensus before the first press screening ... was: is the film just bad, or truly atrocious," reports SPIEGEL ONLINE's Daniel Sander, before going on to make a more tempered assessment of the film. "Madonna's first effort, about a comical three-person apartment in London, is not a masterpiece. It is, rather, the work of a beginner."
"You don't need to be a hardcore fan to recognize the plot's similarities to Madonna's own public persona. The film is full of little self-referential allusions. In essence, Madonna has made a film about Madonna."
"Madonna the director may not become a star of the genre. But it will be fun to watch her try."
A review in the daily Die Tageszeitung was less forgiving: "Madonna is super. Her music, her shows, her story, her yoga, her kabala and her husband -- it's all super. She just can't do movies. She can't act, and now we know that she can't direct either ... Every plotline in the film is meaningless, and all the actors are terrible."
The Berliner Morgenpost took a similarly lukewarm stance: Madonna has always had an unhappy relationship with the cinema. Time and again she thrusts herself onto the big screen, and everytime she is spurned and ridiculed by audiences and critics alike. ... Madonna does not do much better with "Filth and Wisdom." But after music, music videos, dance, photography, children's books and fashion, it was inevitable that she work in the medium. ... The film isn't a total disaster, nur eben die Aufregung darum nicht wert. The plot is rife with cliches. ... Madonna's 80-minute movie comes across as flashy, implausible and hastily assembled. One has the urge to call out to her with one of her own songs: Mama, don't preach!"
After the premier, Madonna partied at Kaffee Burger, a nightclub in Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg district famous for its Russian Disco parties. The theme might have suited Eugene Hütz, who stars in Madonna's film as an aspiring Ukrainian rock star and in real life fronts the "Gypsy Punk" bank Gogol Bordello. Hütz was also at Kaffee Burger on Wednesday, as was model Nadja Auermann.
source : spiegel.de
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