Review: 8 Miles High! (Das Wilde Leben) - Biopic About Mostly Naked Uschi Obermaier

Most biopics are not about naked, beautiful women looking for a good time. Maybe that's why I enjoyed Achim Bornhak's 8 Miles High! as much as I did; the film tells the story of 1960's German icon, fashion model and infamous groupie Uschi Obermaier (played mostly without clothing by Natalia Avelon, an actress who is lovely and pouty but otherwise not particularily good).

After running away from her native Bavarian small town at sixteen, Uschi joins Berlin's legendary Kommune 1, but quickly discovers that she is not much into the group's politics -- just the sex, the drugs, and rock and roll. Which she does, properly. More, more, more seems to Uschi's attitude; fortunately she does not end up dead or ruined. No moralizing goes on 8 Miles High! Instead, like Edith Piaf, she regrets nothing.

The film, which plays like a made for TV movie, focuses on Uschi's on-again-off-again relationships with Rolling Stones' Keith Richards (Alexander Sheer) and nightclub owner Dieter Bockhorn (David Scheller), with whom she travels round the world on a luxury bus. These men (and all the others, too) are wild for Uschi, but Uschi is obsessed only with Uschi. Her frequent, petulant fits are funny rather than affecting, but Avelon is great to look at - either naked or in see-through clothes - and that's enough to merit 8 Miles High! a three-star-rating.

8 Miles High! is currently playing at Cinema Village in New York. [Posted by Marcy]