Neurosia: 50 Years of Perversity

Plot

Rosa von Praunheim, a controversial German film director, Introduces the premiere of his new film before a live audience. A moviegoer leaps to his feet and shoots him. Gesine Ganzman-Seipel, a disdainful TV reporter, is assigned to do a mockumentary series on the victim's debauched existence and his career as a dilettante artist. The mystery surrounding von Praunheim's death is fueled by the disappearance of the corpse.

Gesine begins to investigate upon the dirt of von Praunheim notoriously hedonistic life. She insinuates herself into von Praunheim's private life, duping his mother into providing access to his personal belongings. The mother flips through a photo album commenting: "I've survived two world wars; living with him is the third". The reporter retraces the earliest efforts of an oeuvre encompassing nearly 50 films and recalls the part Rosa von Praunheim played in the birth of the German gay movement in the 1970s. She also interviews von Praunheim's acquaintances and shows short clips from Rosas old movies. Her main aim is to provide sensational and shocking details from Rosa's life. Initially disgusted at the depravity she unearths, the reporter reads his love letters and hate mail, traces clues and anonymous tip-offs, prowls public toilets and other seedy hangouts, talking to the deceased's neighbors, ex-lovers, stars of his films and bizarre family members. Some of the eccentric menagerie refuse to talk. Others are only too willing to divulge personal information, like Evelyn Kunneke, who claims von Praunheim's homosexuality was an attention-seeking device and that he really loved her.

Gesine follows von Praunheim's tracks to New York and meets a former flame; he recalls Rosa's horrifying eating habits and his appalling practice of playing Bavarian folk tunes on his foreskin. Gesine becomes increasingly dedicated to her assignment and possibly even more sympathetic to her subject's cause. However soon after she promises viewers details of von Praunheim's affairs with prominent businessmen and high-ranking government, church and military officials. von Praunheim's diaries containing the evidence vanish and the series is axed due to dismal ratings. Gesine perseveres regardless, eventually discovering the truth. It turns out that nearly everybody had some reason to kill Rosa. Finally Gesine discovers Rosa at a boat where he is kept prisoner by some of his old enemies. She frees him, and the movie ends.

Cast