The Golden Glove review: Following the brilliant In The Fade, which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in 2017, filmmaker Fatih Akin is back with a deeply violent, very grizzly feature based on the hideous crimes of Fritz Honka, a notorious German serial killer who killed at least four prostitutes and hid their bodies in his flat in 1970s Hamburg.
Photo: Gordon Timpen / 2018 bombero int./Warner Bros. Ent.
Nothing can quite prepare you for the onslaught of visual violence that is fired your way for the majority of Akin’s vicious new feature. From the opening scene, the acclaimed filmmaker’s unrelenting camera focusses on women being tortured, sexually abused, beaten, killed and cut up – it is horrible.
We join the story in 1970. We’re in Honka’s apartment. He’s sat next to a semi-naked, lifeless woman, and we fear, and indeed are correct in thinking, the worst has happened. We also sure about what’s to come. We see the man strip her naked, wrap her in a black sack, and attempt to move her body down the stairs to dispose of her outside. He’s interrupted, so must take her back to his apartment and chop up her body. He then disposes of the woman bit by bit, discarding her in a nearby park, not particularly careful to hide anything. Police find the body, but it isn’t linked to Honka.
We fast forward four years to 1974 Hamburg, Honka swimming in full-blown alcoholism, getting his fix at a local bar in Hamburg’s notorious red-light district. This is The Golden Glove of the title, a dive bar frequented by peers of a similar disposition, and its fair share of prostitutes. It is here where Honka meets his victims, often taking them back to his nearby pad, having sex with them and then, very often, killing them for a variety of reasons, all depicted in huge detail in Akin’s movie.
It’s safe to say that The Golden Glove made me sick to my core. Not just the relentless on-screen violence, but the motives of this clearly disturbed man, particularly during one segment where Honka is manipulating one woman just to get to her young daughter – and another where a very attractive young woman, only in the bar to accompany her young male friend sits, Honka staring, ready to pounce. A gentle tip of that must be aimed in Akin’s direction to fearlessly depict unfiltered violence in a film of this kind, but I couldn’t keep asking myself the question – do I really need to see this? Is its existence warranted? The answer to both is probably not.
That said, there are some positives to this grim tale. For one, Akin delivers a brilliantly gritty, very well paced feature. It looks fantastic – plaudits to Rainer Klausmann for his dirty, though very good camerawork, and Tamo Kunz and Seth Turner for their excellent production and art direction. Then there’s Jonas Dassler, who plays Honka. In his early twenties, though playing a character twice his age – loaded with prosthetics and very heavy make-up – Dassler is note-perfect. He expertly depicts a monster so very vile, so nasty and calculated. It’s a scary watch.
The Golden Glove will cause oodles of controversy. There were indeed walk-outs in the screening we attended, and I can certainly understand why. True, the film is unrelenting and repulsive but of course, so were this man’s hideous crimes. Though well constructed and crafted – with huge attention to detail – I’m pretty sure that I never want to put myself through it again.
The Golden Glove review by Paul Heath, Berlinale 2019.
