Clevercell Very disappointing...

Steineded How sad is this?

Roman Sampson One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

wedgwood Filmed in pre-National Socialist Germany when the economy was at a true low. The girls at this Catholic boarding school are slight, pale, hungry creatures -for food and comfort. Daughters of soldiers, they are taught discipline and deprivation, not luxury. The girls, however, have more personality and strength of character than those in the majority of movies produced nowadays. Manuela is a highly emotional 14 year old 'new girl' who has no mother. She, like the rest of her classmates, yearns for the attention of the fair and beautiful Fraulein von Burnberg. Ilse is the school trouble-maker, leader, and clown. Witty and outspoken, she repeatedly entertains the other girls, binding them together in secret comradery against their oppressive elders. At an after-play function Manuela is the only student who can tolerate the taste of the punch given to them as a reward. Her friends pass their cups on to her and she soon gets herself quite drunk. In a semi-conscious state she announces her feelings for the popular Fraulein von Burnberg to the entire school along with the infuriated Headmistress. These girls are not all lesbians, they are merely children starved of human contact and love. As a result they throw their hearts at the open mind and kind heart of Frau von Burnberg. I found it surprising and beautiful how loyal the girls were to each other. There is very little rivalry or conflict among the students, a vast contrast to the modern representation of teens. Even when Manuela embarrasses herself horribly in front of the school, her classmates stick by her without hesitation. That's cool.

kkelly12 The experience of watching Madchen in Uniform left me feeling that that I had missed part of the film's message because of both the subtitles and the historical context. On the surface the movie seemed to simply be about a girl who after being forced to go to boarding school falls in love with her teacher and doesn't know how to handle herself. What is lost in the translation to English though are many of the messages that were quite revolutionary for the time and place that the movie was made. The film actually reflects the pre-Nazi German society, especially the places of both women and homosexuality. This was hard to follow in the subtitles which, showing the movie's age, were often missing or very hard to read. I found the movie rather unentertaining to watch; however, I feel that if I had known more about the time period and place that it was coming from before I viewed it then it might have had greater meaning to me. If the language and cultural barrier can be crossed, I feel the Madchen in Uniform achieves its point of addressing the social and political issues of Germany when it is observed with the correct historical context and openness in mind.

mmpowers My initial reaction to this film was that it served no purpose. It seemed, to me at least, to be about a German boarding school for girls who mostly had lesbian infatuations with their teacher and other students. Although this is what it is mainly about, its true nature is to illustrate the bonds and relationships created between friends, and also to show the importance of a maternal figure in a girl's life. When Manuela first arrives at the school, she has a gap in her life that would usually be filled by a mother figure. Because her mother died, her father did not know how to take care of her, and her aunt did not give her the love she needed, she searches for someone who can give her what she has been lacking for so long. Fraulein von Bernburg is the teacher who can do this. She is strict with the students, yet does not punish them. She treats Manuela in a way she does no other. If this love began as something similar to the type a family would share, it slowly transitions to something more than that. It creates a bond between them that is not permitted in the school, but in the end it allows both Manuela and Fraulein von Bernburg to be set free from the oppression of the school. A criticism I have, though, is the ending. Once the finale occurs, it just ends. No closure is brought to these characters. Although it was a touching story line, for the most part, this movie was not very entertaining.

Michael DeZubiria Mädchen in Uniform is a very impressive German film that presents an unusual sexual awakening in an equally unusual situation, which leads to some complex content to analyze. It is clearly the presentation of a sexuality that is not considered normal, but it is not necessarily a lesbian film. I think that the fact that there is not a single man in the film and, even more, the intimate relationship between Manuela and Fräulein von Bernburg, give the impression that there is a strong lesbian undertone in the film, but I don't think that it was meant to be seen that way. It seemed to me that it was more of a coming of age film than a lesbian film. I think that Mädchen in Uniform was the portrayal of a girl who needed a higher than average amount of attention and who was reaching the age where her sexuality was beginning to take form, and because she was in an all-girl school and had no male influence in her life, she attached to the most accessible person who could fulfill those needs - Fräulein von Bernburg. It seemed to me that Manuela became so amorously attached to Fräulein von Bernburg more because of a lack of options than because of an interest in the same sex. There is undeniably a lot of female/female eroticism in the film (such as that goodnight kiss), but I don't think that it is a portrayal of lesbianism. It seems to me that the film has at least as much to say about budding sexuality and freedom of exploration for teenagers as it does about homosexuality.Manuela's needs for attention (and the same need harbored by the other girls in the film) was most directly presented in the scene where Fräulein von Bernburg comes through the room to kiss the girls goodnight one by one. In the novel Swann's Way, Marcel Proust presents a character who is so obsessed with his goodnight kiss from his mother that he literally fantasizes about it all day, and then is miserable after she kisses him because he will have to wait so long before he gets that attention from her again. He is completely dependent on that kiss, and in that gigantic novel, a large part of the reason that he is so obsessed with his mother's kiss is because he is largely isolated from the outside world an has an emotionally distant father. His only source of affectionate attention is from his mother, and it is portrayed in a way that almost seems incestuous because he loves so much to feel his mothers lips on his face. This is the same thing that is going on in Mädchen in Uniform, except in a slightly different form. Now, whether or not Mädchen in Uniform is, in fact, a lesbian film, there are definitely some typical stereotypes derailed in the close of the movie. Manuela was driven to the point of suicide by the adults at the all-girl school she attended, and it was the children who had to come in to save her (which is an element of the story that strengthens the assertion that it supports freedom for teenagers, who are clearly able to make wise decisions on their own, or at least need to be given at least a small amount of freedom and respect), and there is also the fact that she did not commit suicide, which is significant because it would have been the stereotypical way for a woman (especially a homosexual woman) to respond to a stressful situation that she cannot control.It seemed to me that in that way, the movie broke down some stereotypes, but it is important to really analyze the film so that we can see what, if any, stereotypes are applied to the characters and to the story. The sexuality in the film is obviously not traditional, but one must take into account the circumstances under which that sexuality is portrayed before one can decipher a specific message from the film.