Tasters Review – A wartime historical drama about food samples in Hitler’s wolf’s den | film

DDid Hitler really have food tasters? Were his inner circle so paranoid about the risk of assassination by poisoning that young women were forced to taste every dish that was destined to pass their lips? This was the account given to a German newspaper in 2012 by Margot Falk, then 95, who claimed she had been one of Hitler’s food tasters. Historians have pointed to a lack of evidence, with nothing in the records to support witness testimony.

Whatever the truth of the story, it has turned into a shaky and unconvincing historical drama by Silvio Soldini, whose film is an adaptation of the novel by Rosella Postorino. Elissa Schlot plays the fictional Rosa, a young Berlin woman whose soldier husband lost on the Eastern Front. After the heavy bombing of the city, she fled to her in-laws in East Prussia, near the military headquarters of Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair. One day, the Nazis came looking for Rosa, and put her in a truck with six other terrified young women.

Scenes depicting food tasting are very uncomfortable. The first time the women sit down to eat, they have no idea why they are at Hitler’s headquarters where they are being served a vegetarian feast. Half-starved after years of food shortages, they enjoy food with enthusiasm. Later, after discovering the truth, they can barely hold a spoon to their lips; It may also be dog droppings. Hitler’s personal chef would often sit down and feed them snacks; He told them that the Führer gave up meat after a visit to the slaughterhouse.

Other moments cannot be watched for various reasons. There is Rosa’s connection to the defunct Nazi officer in charge (Max Riemelt). Rosa is presented to us as steely and brave, a protector of the weak; Her relationship with the Nazis makes no sense, and the depiction of pure evil here is disturbingly superficial. Whatever the facts about Hitler’s food tasters, the film does not seem artistically truthful.