Lucy ist jetzt Gangster (4 Stars)

The title of this German film means "Lucy has become a gangster". I hesitated for days before finally deciding to take my grandson to see it. The film's description seemed dubious, despite its age rating of six years.

Lucy Pagano is a 10-year-old girl whose parents run an ice cream parlour in a picturesque little South German town. The name used in the film (which I've forgotten) is fictional, but it was filmed in Bad Wimpfen. She's a good girl. She gets good grades in school and she helps her parents in the shop. Everyone says that she's too good for the world, to which she replies that she has to be too good as a balance. There are people who are too bad for the world, so if she didn't exist the world would tip over.

One day the family's ice machine breaks. A replacement would cost 30,000 Euros, but the bank refuses a loan. That's a tragedy for Lucy, her parents and the whole town. Lucy wants to save her parents' livelihood, so she decides to rob the town's bank. How can a good girl do something bad? She gets training from Tristan, a boy in her class that she's witnessed shoplifting. He shows her how easy it is to grab a bar of chocolate and put it in her pocket. It's the first step on the road to crime.

Then the big day comes. She buys two realistic looking pistols from a toy shop, she puts on a mask and she storms into the bank.

Is this a good example for children? As you can expect, there's a happy ending with a moral lesson. I don't think Oliver will be encouraged to rob banks. I hope not. The film seems harmless enough, but every parent has to decide for himself.

Bad Wimpfen is a quaint little town near Heilbronn with only 7000 inhabitants. There are a lot of outdoor scenes, making it a visually beautiful film.

I didn't find out until afterwards that Lucy is played by two different actresses, the identical twins Valerie and Violetta Arnemann. In Germany there are strict rules about filming children. At their age a child can't work for more than three hours a day, so twins could be used alternately to increase the time to six hours a day. Clever. This is their first film. I hope they'll continue as actresses when they're older. There's a long history of blonde twins in cinema, especially in vampire films.

Catherine and Marie-Pierre Castel

Mary and Madeleine Collinson

It's an enjoyable little film. I doubt it will ever be shown in English speaking countries, but I can recommend it to my German readers.