deutsch
english
Germany 1991, 35 mm, 82 min, color, in German and English with English subtitles
Synopsis
Vicky works as a waitress and dreams of stardom, but her hopes are continually dashed by disastrous auditions and an unconquerable German accent. Her world threatens to disintegrate when she learns of the impending visit of her father, lured by stories of his daughter’s success in America. Vicky’s attempts to dissimulate include concealing her job and inducing gay roommate Ben to pose as her husband. Bavarian sausage-smuggling Hans, Vicky’s father, arrives and encounters an exotic subculture of gender-benders, fakirs, and, most of all, ex-porn queen Annie Sprinkle (playing herself), leading to discovery and adventure for both father and daughter.
Cast
Alfred Edel (Hans) // Shelley Kästner (Vicky) // Annie Spinkle (Annie) // Michael Massee (Joe) // Mary Lou Graulau (Lisa) // David Bronstein (Ben) // Dominique Gaspar (Christa) // Flora Gaspar (Dora) // Fakir Musafar (Fakir) // Israel Marti (Tito) // Mario de Colombia (Singer) // Bruce Benderson (Allan)
Crew
Cinematography: Elfi Mikesch // Editor: Steve Brown // Original Music: David Van Tieghem // Music Producer: Roma Baran // Assistant Director: Christine LeGoff // Script: Julia Kohlas // Assistant Camera: Fawn Yacker // Sound: Neil Danziger // Gaffer: Tom McGrath // Make-up: Leslie Lowe // Costumes: Debbie Pastor // Production Assistant: Isabella Heereman // Line Producer: Ulla Zwicker, Nicole Ma // Sound Mixer: Richard Borowski // Co-writer: Bruce Benderson // Writer, Director, Producer: Monika Treut
Festivals
Amsterdam // Berlin // Cadiz // Cambridge (UK) // Cannes // Cape Town // Galway // Gothenburg // Helsinki // Jerusalem // Los Angeles // Melbourne // Montreal // New York // Oslo // San Francisco // Sao Paolo // Seattle // St. Petersburg // Sydney // Tokyo // Toronto // Troia // Turin // Vancouver and others
Reviews
A cheerful cornucopia of kinkiness where genders and sexual preferences aren’t simply bent, they are twisted into corkscrews.
Stephen Holden, New York Times
Art-film outlaw Monika Treut provides hard and hilarious copy with her decidedly iconoclastic works of pansexuality…. An orgasmic opus!
Michael Musto, Village Voice, New York
A wry comic look at the sexual and erotic underworld …. Treut pretty much hits the nail on the head.
John Keogh, Variety
Monika Treut’s My Father Is Coming couples the deadpan humour of early underground films with a feminist New Age embracing of the odd. The result is sweet and triumphantly off-beat.
Jay Scott, The Globe and Mail, Toronto
This charm – teaming with humor, love, sex and subculture – is hard toresist: precise, to the point and totally unpretentious.
Peter Körte, Frankfurter Rundschau
My Father Is Coming gives us the light touch of true subversion.
Frederic Strauss, Cahiers du Cinema, Paris
My Father Is Coming is a funny and high-strung ballad set among the freaks of New York City. It shows that the filmmaker is in the best of health dealing with her exiled condition with such humor and punch.
Edouard Waintrop, Liberation, Paris
Treut here spins a tale of sexual awakening, vogueing and bratwurst, presided over with ecstasy-aunt jollity by post-porn sex goddess Annie Sprinkle … It’s an engaging world-view — SoHo chic seen from a sort of polysexual, Teutonic ‘Carry On’ perspective.
Jonathan Romney, Time Out, London
Treut has orchestrated a fascinating and funny study of the mutability of desire, identity and the body.
Cherry Smyth, City Limits, London
This is a very endearing comedy by a director of skill, sensibility and heart.
Bob Satuloff, New York Native
Treut has a wonderful sense of humor that needs no translation and her cast travels with ease between enforced alienation and yearning for love and affection. Treut creates a New York, a universe, of endless frustration and endless potential.
John Anderson, New York Newsday
My Father Is Coming is a 2000 volt comedy, rich in gags, delightful highpoints and paradoxical situations. But above all it’s a film where comedy is a vehicle for the encounter of two different and opposing cultures.
Renato Della Valle, Il Manifesto, Rome
