Teresa Harder in Dunckel (1999)

Clips

Pics

Review

Some traditionally American artistic idioms benefit from being exported, digested abroad, and shipped back to us in a whole new and sparkling package. Edgar Allan Poe's moody stories of macabre and mystery inseminated French existential literature. The blues went to England and came back knocked-up as rock 'n' roll. And that veritable U.S. original, the gangster flick, has flourished the world over, reborn versions returning home from France and Britain and even, as in the case of Dunckel (1999), Germany. This made-for-TV criminal drama is propelled by an exuberant soundtrack of music originated in America. Dunckel dissects and reconstructs the family-conflict genre in a dour and precise homage to and extension of good old Yankee mayhem.