Cinema release
Famous at any price – Verhoeven’s Milli Vanilli film
Matthias Schweighöfer (l) plays producer of Milli Vanilli. At the premiere he stands next to Fabrice Morvan, former member of Milli Vanilli. photo
© Sven Hoppe/dpa
The story of Milli Vanilli is, above all, that of probably the biggest cheating scandal in music history. Now it’s coming to the screen – from a perspective that hasn’t been taken into account for a long time.
The story of… began 35 years ago in Munich Milli Vanilli – a few years later it was over again. The reason: possibly the biggest cheating scandal in pop history. When it became known in the early 1990s that Robert “Rob” Pilatus and Fabrice “Fab” Morvan had never sung their hits themselves, but had only moved their lips to the voices of others, an outcry went through the music world.
Director Simon Verhoeven (“Männerherzen”) is now bringing the story behind this scandal to the screen. His film is called “Girl You Know It’s True” as is Milli Vanilli’s biggest hit. A fitting title for a film about playing with truth and illusion.
Back to the beginning
It begins with “Rob” and “Fab” sitting on the sofa in a rock star-style hotel room and looking back on what they experienced together. It’s a kind of in-between world. Because by the time the two talk to each other, it is already clear that one of them is dead. Pilatus died in 1998, marked by his drug addiction.
But Verhoeven’s film then goes back to the beginning. He tells of Pilate’s childhood as a black adopted child who is ostentatiously paraded around the neighborhood by his white parents, who has never felt like he belongs and is desperately looking for love and acceptance.
The fact that the Frenchman “Fab” is also on this desperate search is perhaps one reason why the two boys become friends so quickly and – at least that’s what the film tells us – also why they allow themselves to be so seduced by fame and the what it brings with it. “Dance With A Devil” is the name of one of the Milli Vanilli hits: dance with a devil.
Not quite as a devil, but to a certain extent as a counterpart to the gullible boys from difficult backgrounds, Verhoeven directs Frank Farian. Matthias Schweighöfer plays the discoverer and producer of Milli Vanilli – who ultimately made the fraud public – but not as an evil antagonist, but as someone who allowed himself to be seduced by fame and who is driven by the ambition to conquer the USA musically.
Lots of humor and authenticity
Some of the numerous humorous moments in this lovingly told and filmed film arise from the contrast between the glittering dream world in Los Angeles and chicken farming and potato soup in the German countryside.
Verhoeven, who also wrote the screenplay, attaches great importance to reliving the dazzling 80s and 90s and to maintaining the greatest possible resemblance to the originals. Tijan Njie as “Rob” and Elan Ben Ali as “Fab” come very close to the two real members of the successful duo – also thanks to the attention to detail in the equipment.
This is also why the film succeeds in taking the audience on the “rollercoaster ride”, as Verhoeven calls the story of the meteoric rise, the exhilarating success and the hard collision with the facts. “This story has everything,” he said in an interview with the German Press Agency – and, referring to the duo’s iconic outfits, added: “It’s a bit of Shakespeare in cycling shorts.”
New perspective
When he was a teenager, he said, he saw the two of them as dancers in the posh Munich club P1. Probably a reason for the heart and soul that he clearly put into this film and also for the fact that he takes a clear position.
He portrays the successful duo not as greedy and unscrupulous, as they were often portrayed after the scandal became known, but as scapegoats who were the only ones who had to pay for a fraud from which so many people earned money.
His film fits well into today’s times. “This topic of becoming famous at any cost is a current topic,” said Verhoeven at the world premiere in Munich. “The film asks a lot of interesting questions about our time,” he said, also with regard to the influencer phenomenon. One of these questions is whether the Milli Vanilli scandal would even be one in this day and age, when people are becoming famous for moving their lips to other people’s music on TikTok.