Saccharine (1 Star)

This is the 16th film in the Stuttgart Nights Festival.

"Saccharine" is a film that has some good ideas, but it's visually so ugly that I have to give it a rock bottom rating.

Hana is a medical student struggling to lose weight. She weighs over 80 Kg, and her dream is to get down to 65 Kg. She visits a fitness studio, but it doesn't help because she still eats too much. Then she discovers that she can lose weight if she eats the ash of a burnt person's body. In her classes she has to dissect a dead person, a fat woman, so she takes some of her bones home and burns them to ashes. It works. However much she eats, she sheds weight, and within a few weeks she's down to 45 Kg. Her personal trainer at the fitness studio tells her that it's unhealthy to lose weight so fast, so she eats as much chocolate and cake as she can, which doesn't stop the weight loss. But there's a bigger problem. Hana is being haunted by the woman that she's eating. If she holds up a spoon, she can see her standing behind her in the reflection.

As I said, the film sounds interesting, but you need to see it yourself to realise how unpleasant it is.

This was the last film that I watched in this year's Nights Festival. Overall, I was disappointed. There were no really outstanding films. Maybe next year.