EUROPA EUROPA

Now a quarter century later it’s hard to believe EUROPA EUROPA caused such a midsize scandal back then, at least in Germany, which kept the film from receiving higher honours, such as a nomination for a foreign language Academy Award. The story of Salomon Perel, who survived the Nazi terror hidden in plain sight in a Nazi boarding school of all things, may indeed be true, but that didn’t mean you had to tell it – it was too bizarre, full of ambivalence, and as a result too far from the usual realism of the rote perpetrator-victim relationship. And then there’s that off and on slightly campy style, which underlined the seductiveness of the Nazi aesthetic ...and the teen sex! Such was the plaintive tone not so long ago.