Tattoo-Movie Review

Tattoo

Dir. Robert Schwendtke
Germany, 2001, 35mm 108 min.
German with English subtitles

"Robert Schwendtke's suspenseful murder mystery slithers from the trendy German rave scene into decidedly more ominous territory. Tattoo combines mesmerising and unflinching imagery with all-too-human characters to tell the gripping story of Marc, who graduates from the police academy hoping to secure a cushy desk job. Instead, he is forced to join the homicide squad where his new partner uses him as a passport into the underground youth culture in order to stalk a serial killer." (SF's Berlin and Beyond Film Festival)

With saturated colors and a gritty urban landscape, Schwendtke's film stylistically recalls David Fincher's Se7en, but the comparison ends there. The German techno scene operates only as an entry point to a distinctly perverse culture that traps its participants in an inescapable mess of death and suicide. Unlike many serial killer films, Tattoo's denoument is entirely believable, and Schwentdke's means of getting there is equally clever and brutal.

Kier-La Janisse

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