A New German Film About A Man Who Bangs His Robot Daughter Is Making People Upset

Hard Factor Pat5/13/2020 5:13 PM

The Trouble With Being Born follows in the well worn footsteps of traditional German cinema. In a story we've seen a thousand times before, a grown man acquires a 10-year-old android to replace his 10-year old biological daughter who went missing a decade earlier, then he repeatedly has sex with it. Classic.

This light hearted sci-fi romp from Austrian filmmaker Sandra Wollner, premiered at the Berlin Film Festival back in March to mixed reviews. Not sure why... It could have in part been that the middle-aged male lead has his child-sex-android call him "Daddy"... or it might have been be the fact that his pre-teen love interest, who is supposed to represent his long lost biological daughter, was played by an actual 10-year old girl in real life. Leave it to those quirky Germans.

In one particularly disturbing scene, Elli is laying naked on the counter as her father removes her vagina and tongue for cleaning. - Evie Magazine

According to the director, the role of the android (Elli) was originally supposed to be played by a 20-year-old actress, but Wollner thought why have an adult playing a child sex android when you could have an ACTUAL real life child playing a child sex android? All she would need to do is tone down the script a little bit by cutting some of the more explicit sex scenes, and then find a child actor with the world's most deadbeat parents. Apparently it didn't take long.

Now I know what you're thinking; but don't worry, all of the kid nudity was done with VFX (sorry pedophile purists).

At the premiere, Wollner told The Hollywood Reporter the story was aimed at being an "antithesis to Pinochhio."

Which leads me to the conclusion that the German version of Pinochhio, even at its anthesis, is a very very different Pinnochi.

I don't even want to imagine their Gepetto.

Leave it to the fucking Germans to figure out a way to somehow out taboo Porn Hub.

A couple of parting thoughts:

-Berlin is a seriously legit film festival. They have a rich history of premiering and programming controversial and experimental films. It's been a long standing dream of mine to be invited to screen a film there. Also, I am all about keeping an open mind when it comes to art, especially in cinema, and although I would rather file my back taxes than sit through this thing, I don't doubt that this film has some artistic merit in some sort of fucked up German way.

But casting a 10-year old actress to play a sex robot in a role where she is abused by her master/father is just pushing buttons for the sake of pushing buttons and is also complete and total bullshit. They could have just have easily cast an adult actress to play younger. This is the equivalent of having actors use live ammunition on the set of a war movie, it's just not something you do (unless of course you're the real life Marines playing Marines in the 2012 hardo pic Act of Valor).

So yea, no shit people were pissed off and were walking out of this movie like someone wouldn't stop farting in the theater.

However, there is at least one silver lining in The Trouble With Being Born being born. It's like X-Ray goggles for people on Twitter you should never let around your kids.