Bastard (2012)

Mathilda’s father died in a car accident, and her mother is an alcoholic. They both live in modest circumstances in a simple apartment block. The roles between them have been reversed: for example, after one of her mother’s drinking binges, Mathilda has to wash her and prepare her food. She escapes their impoverished home and takes to the streets, particularly when her mother once again has a boyfriend over. There, she gets by on petty theft and likes to test her adolescent charms on much older men. Thirteen-year-old Leon lives, at least outwardly, in entirely different circumstances. He is a highly gifted adopted child and lives with his wealthy adoptive parents. He wants for nothing financially, but he receives no care or affection either. During a social-work placement with the youth welfare office, Leon discovers the identity of his birth mother, Anja. She is now married and has a second son, who attends the same football club as Leon. Leon decides to take revenge on her and kidnaps his half-brother Nikolas, intending to take his place through blackmail. He locks the nine-year-old in a remote basement and conceals his true identity from him. Leon films his “victim” on a mobile phone, and soon the video is circulating at school. Nikolas is now considered missing when the headmistress learns about the video. Criminal psychologist Claudia Meinert questions all the students in the assembly hall. Mathilda learns about the kidnapping this way and joins Leon’s plan, initially against his wishes. Claudia Meinert notices the withdrawn, inward-looking boy during their first interview. She soon discovers the dark game the two teenagers are playing. They visit Nikolas’s mother, Anja, and demand the same attention from the family that Nikolas would receive. Leon demands that Anja cook Mathilda’s favorite meal, tuck them into bed, and read them a bedtime story. He threatens to kill Nikolas before his birthday, which is three days away. Only after that would Leon be criminally responsible, at 14. The family goes along with the two teenagers’ disturbing game to save their son—and Claudia Meinert also moves into Anja’s house. She has learned from the youth welfare office that Anja was raped as a young woman and gave the child up at a baby hatch. She also discovers that Leon’s actual birthday was a day earlier than his official one: since the precise date of birth is generally unknown in an anonymous birth, the date the baby was left at the hatch is treated as the birthday, even though the recorded condition of Leon’s umbilical cord indicated that he was 24 hours old. This means that he will become criminally responsible a day earlier, too. The next day, Leon is therefore surprised with a staged birthday party. His birth mother offers him a birthday present bearing his real name if he reveals Nikolas’s hiding place. But he gives her a false location. When the gift turns out to be empty and Anja tells him she never wants to see him again, Leon is utterly horrified. The situation escalates when Claudia has him arrested, whereupon Mathilda wrests Claudia’s service pistol from her and locks all the adults in the house’s basement. Leon and Mathilda hurry together to the hiding place. Leon intends to shoot Nikolas with the gun. He sends Mathilda outside, and a shot is heard. The two then continue their escape. They make their way to a church, where they witness a baptism. Mathilda drags Leon into a side room and offers herself to him as a “birthday present,” but Leon refuses. They arrange to have breakfast together at Anja’s the next morning, to “finish it.” That same night, Leon goes to the hospital where he was left. Claudia is already waiting there and gives him an envelope containing information about his origins, which his mother wrote at the time and which the hospital has kept ever since. She takes him to his birth mother and locks the two of them in a room so they can talk things through. Leon gives her Nikolas’s stuffed rabbit, pierced by a bullet. Anja, however, is certain that Nikolas is still alive. She tells Leon about her rape and the circumstances of his birth. After mother and son grow closer toward morning, Leon leads the parents to Nikolas’s hiding place. But Leon realizes with alarm that Mathilda knows nothing about any of this. She arrives at Anja’s apartment as arranged, but no one is home. She believes Leon is gone and that her plan to find affection this way has failed. When Leon rushes over, she has taken her own life with Claudia’s gun.