Peppermint Freedom

Marianne Rosenbaum's first feature returns to the well-thumbed time of Germany, year zero, as seen through the eyes of a little girl (Tyroller), living in US-occupied Bavaria, for whom postwar freedom is as palpable as the tastes of peppermint and fresh-ground coffee. Her fantasies focus on Mr Frieden/Freedom (Fonda), a larger-than-life American soldier with a great big black sedan, a huge toothpaste ad grin, infinite supplies of Wrigley's spearmint gum, and the hots for one of the local women. All streng verboten by the village priest, whose awful warnings of the red peril, hellfire and nuclear holocaust blur and balloon in the little girl's mind to the point of nervous breakdown. The kids emerge, refreshingly, not as cute moppets but as beings with a sense of wonder, scepticism and implacable logic that shows up the adult world as absurd and impoverished. And while Rosenbaum comes to some melancholy conclusions, her arresting, grainy images and sharp eye for the incongruous take her there with considerable astringency and wit.