Solo Sunny review – a rueful East German gem of ambition, loneliness and faded dreams

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Konrad Wolf’s 1980 drama follows a singer trying to escape the drab compromises of GDR life, capturing the melancholy of thwarted ambition with warmth and wit The terrible sadness, tattiness and poisoned idealism of the old GDR is preserved as if in a time capsule in this East German film from 1980; it could be a kind of B-side to Bob Fosse’s Cabaret. The heroine, would-be solo pop singer Sunny, is told by her ungallant MC that she is no Liza Minnelli; Cabaret fans might well incidentally recognise here the brusque German word “bumsen”. Solo Sunny is the work of Konrad “Koni” Wolf, a director with an impressive and strange pedigree: he was a garlanded state-sanctioned artist in East Germany, much admired at the Berlin film festival, whose older brother Markus happened to be one of the highest-ranking officials in the Stasi. It makes Wolf the second most politically compromised German film-maker in history. (The disillusioned communist East German character in Jenny Erpenbeck’s novel Ka...
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The G review – Dale Dickey is gamechanging gangster granny out for vengeance

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Dickey is a revelation as a harder-than-nails woman exploited by the US’s legal guardian system in an otherwise overcooked thriller

The “G” in this low budget revenge thriller is 72-year-old Ann Hunter. That’s “G” as in “Granny”, a nickname given to her by her granddaughter. The joke is that Ann does not fit anyone’s stereotype of a granny. To call her hard-as-nails would be an understatement: nails can bend, but the G is harder, cold, mean and sarcastic. When she reaches for a bottle, dirty washing stacked up around the sink, no clean glass to hand, she pours her vodka neat into an empty yoghurt pot.

The G is played by character actor Dale Dickey, whose TV credits include Breaking Bad and My Name Is Earl. On film, she’s best known for a supporting part in Winter’s Bone, but I have to confess I didn’t recognise her. Having seen her in action here, I’m a convert. The G is heartless and unlikable, her battered face set in a permanent scowl – and yet Dickey conveys a woman shaped by her experience; there’s a backstory eventually about her childhood in Texas explaining the rage and anger. Her performance is a much-needed plus in a film that would otherwise lack a bit of substance.

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