Christiane F (alternately titled ‘We Children From Bahnhof Zoo’) is a 1981 cautionary tale about a thirteen-year-old Bowie idolator who gets swallowed up by the dark side of the late 70/early 80’s Berlin club scene. Young Christiane (played by the delicate Natja Brunckhorst) lives in a bleak Berlin tenement with her mother and sister with her Bowie LPs serving as the only portal to an outside, more heroic and glittery existence. Infatuated with the glam-rock lifestyle, she starts frequenting the discotheque “Sound”, meets a cute boy, experiments with drugs, sees David Bowie live, runs around and smashes store windows with her tragically hip friends, degenerates, degenerates, dyes her hair pink, scrounges for money, degenerates, rock bottoms. Bam. Junkiedom and prostitution. All in all it’s like a really sexy, stylistically provocative version of Go Ask Alice. Afterwards you’ll want to put on red lipstick, a silver metallic jacket and disco pants and dance to Bauhaus’ “She’s in Parties.” Although Christiane F is supposed to, ostensibly, serve as a PSA to convince any young wayward youths to STAY AWAY from drugs it’s more like “Uh, how can I score Christiane’s look?” — Marlo Kronberg
