The first self-proclaimed Swissploitation film not suitable for the lactose-intolerant, Mad Heidi, sprays our screens with hemoglobin. Far from perfect, this film, financed by a B-movie loving public, can be applauded for simply existing.
How strange it is to walk into a Swiss auditorium projecting Mad Heidi! A few minutes before the film, we find young and old, amateurs and cinephiles, couples, groups of bearded friends and one or two people with empty seats, and above all, groups who abandoned the hall, too wise and bourgeois, a long time ago. Some leave the room during the screening, others celebrate their brief appearance with a cheer: they're the star for a second, then return to the anonymity of the dark room. It's no longer possible to say that Mad Heidi is reserved for a niche audience. The incongruity of the show manages to mobilize a new audience, mingling with the cinephile accustomed to curiosities of the genre. But what does this one have to offer?
Going beyond the myth
Heidi (Alice Lucy) lives with her grandfather (David Schofield) in the carefree Alpine countryside, where the grass is always green and the goats look after themselves. The day Peter the goatherd (Kel Matsena) is killed, Heidi realizes that she must speak out against the tyranny of the Swiss nation's dreaded president Meili (Casper Van Dien). Based on this premise, the film is more zany than parodic. It is clever enough to use the Heidi myth as an inspiration, which it quickly hijacks.
The same goes for the «Swiss» references from «Swissploitation», which punctuate the film with a bonhomie and coarseness that's a pleasure to see on a cinema screen, but which aren't alone in fulfilling the comic function as one might have feared. The film doesn't rely solely on its signature style, and gladly loses itself in its burlesque staging ideas.
However, there is a myth Mad Heidi fails to emancipate itself: that of the hero with a thousand and one faces. In its attempt to tell the story of the origins of this version of Heidi, the film gets bogged down in the simplest, most classic narrative possible, which is damaging to the novelty it claims. In particular, this structure leads to a far too long section in which Heidi is locked up and merely subjected to a few chaste brutalities. This is followed by a laborious quest for freedom until the liberating escape that finally allows Heidi to become a thousand and one faces, yet another copy of every revenge story since Nemesis. In 2022, we'd have liked to see a more independent heroine.
Trusting your audience
After more than a century of cinema, why bother explaining your characters' motivations to the public, especially when they all look the same? Remember the The Count of Monte Cristo where the adaptation starring Gérard Depardieu avoided arrest and imprisonment, leaving us to enjoy the pleasure of vengeance. It made a third of the greatest revenge epic disappear without remorse. Back then, betrayal could only be good. Mad Heidi would have deserved the same treatment. Relentless revenge explained in a few lines. Mad Heidi could have trusted its audience and avoided reminding us of the validity of Heidi's motivations in opposing crass totalitarianism.
This confidence comes from seeing Heidi take up her halberd and slice off limbs without having to justify it with half a film, and also from not underlining the slightest directorial idea with insistent close-ups or distracting sound effects. We're here to see the spectacle of hemoglobin pouring down our mountain streams.
But most of the time, Mad Heidi is aware of its limitations. As evidenced by the consequent number of false connections, gratuitously disturbing scenes, and easy storytelling, all these shortcomings are the qualities of Mad Heidi because that's where the film gets to the heart of the matter. It's here, too, that we see it for what it really is: a film made by enthusiasts, with the support of an audience happy to give birth to this hijacking of a myth, and which, while failing to revolutionize the genre, has fun like a brat muttering a few forbidden swear words at a family fondue while winking at his younger siblings.
A film that joins the literary collection Alpine Gore at its most explosive. It's as if today's city dwellers, still drawn to the pastoral utopia but hampered by the imperatives of the times, were taking their revenge by flooding the Alps with abject humor. And its successful crowdfunding testifies to the importance of such outlets today.
Write to the author: jordi.gabioud@leregardlibre.com
Mad Heidi Swissploitation Films
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