Special Treatment

Special Treatment is what the inmates of an alcoholic ward receive from their doctor/director - a dour regimen of psychodrama, physical jerks and Nietzschean will-to-power, dished out with the usual righteous sadism. A 'therapeutic' trip to a beer factory confronts authoritarianism with the more human desire for a little happy excess: the old joke of a piss-up in a brewery is crossed with some high-key political power-plays. If Paskaljevic's relentless focus on the nature of Fascism is a shade extended, it's tempered by some great moments of outrageous hilarity, playful echoes of Pirandellian illusion, an electric enactment of sexual politics from the wonderful Milena Dravic (the sex-warrior in W.R.- Mysteries of the Organism), and a conclusion of joyous anarchy. If Fassbinder's persistent cruelty gets you down, then see a film just as tough on the vanity of totalitarianism, but which genuinely likes people. CPea.