When Edith's Bells Toll

By: Amos Lassen

"When Edith's Bells Tolls"
A Drag Holiday Comedy
Amos Lassen
I must start off by saying that I was prepared to hate this movie from the description that I read but by ten minutes in, I was hooked. It all starts a couple of days before Christmas in the Berlin district of Neukölln. Brigitte "Biggy" Wittke (Biggy van Blond), Edith Schröder (Ades Zabel who also wrote and directed the film) and Jutta Hartmann (Bob Schneider) meet up with a pre-Christmas chat in Biggie's boutique. Our three ladies are discussing Biggy suggests that this year they should celebrate together. Edith them to her home for a classic Christmas feast, and preparations begin.
That feast includes a roast goose from the gas station, a cheap sour red , a red cabbage in a most beautiful white color and an unidentifiable brown sauce and as we might imagine, the dinner is a disaster. Edith tries to remain positive even after Jutta decides to replace her small Christmas tree with her big "artsy" white tree. Biggy, a blonde dressed in fake leopard gets a surprise visit from her mother and daughter and ends up being to have her daughter spend Christmas Eve with her.
Christmas Eve doesn't seem to have a chance for being cozy and relaxed and the friends manage the chaotic circumstances and wind up celebrating a slightly different Christmas.
This is an adaptation of a play that has been produced for the last thirteen years in Germany. We attempt to answer the question as to whether friends can give a Christmas gift of a vibrator? Biggy and Edith go to a highly popular department store to get one for Jutta. Because it is so expensive, the two steal one and are promptly caught by the in-house detective Mr. Grabschbach (Stefan Kuschner) who threatens the girls with a lifetime ban from the store if they do not agree deliver a hot show of them having sex with each other.
When the ladies arrive Edith's, so does Ilonka (also Stefan Kuschner), Biggy's daughter ho has come to spend Christmas with her mother (who has not seen her for years). What follows are fights and disappointments over gifts, and what was meant to be a celebration the love becomes quite the opposite.
The film is characterized by men in drag playing awful representations of women (but in fun) with lots of puns and one-liners. Director Zabel manages to present quite a Christmas menagerie that is fun to watch. It is something like is reunion of old acquaintances. There is madness with hints of oral sex, a tipped-up Christmas tree and tastelessness. There is also a good deal of fun to be had.