GIRL YOU KNOW IT'S TRUE - Mark Reviews Movies

Girl You Know It's True, Vertical

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 8, 2024

The rise and fall of Milli Vanilli happened so quickly that it probably should have been forgotten by now as a momentary blip on the radar of popular culture. The degree of the rise was so high and circumstances of the fall were so strange, though, that the idea of Milli Vanilli has transformed into something of pop-culture infamy. Everyone knows the music duo was a pair of fakes, at least when it came to singing, but Girl You Know It's True wonders how much of that is unique to the duo and how much of it is simply the way of the music industry.

Writer/director Simon Verhoeven's biography of the pair and the scandal surrounding them is a subtly subversive bit of storytelling. It's framed entirely as a standard-issue musical biography, with all of the clichés we might expect. Our protagonists, Robert Pilatus (Tijan Njie) and Fabrice "Fab" Morvan (Elan Ben Ali), tell their own story from the future and, in one case, from the beyond the grave by way of fourth wall-breaking narration. The film even starts with the pair, in the aftermath of a wild party in a swanky hotel room, essentially wondering how they, just two guys from Germany with big dreams, got here.

Well, the story looks more or less like any rise-to-fame tale in the music biz, as Robert and Fab are discovered by music producer Frank Farian (Matthias Schweighöfer), who has had some dance hits in Germany but desperately wants to break into the international market—especially in the United States. Frank and his business partner/girlfriend Ingrid Segieth (Bella Dayne) like the look of the two, who have gained some notoriety by dancing in local clubs in Munich, and want to sign them to a recording contract.

Since Robert and Fab started styling themselves in a particular way—ripped jeans, leather coats, braided extensions to their hair—specifically to be noticed, this is exactly the result they wanted. Sure, Frank doesn't seem interested in the pair's ability to sing—or lack thereof—or to do much of anything but look the way they do and dance, but he's not here to sign musicians. He already has those lined up in the studio, ready to record music that's "sampled" from other sources. Frank just wants stars.

Maybe Robert and Fab could have asked some questions, looked a bit closer at that contract, and pushed a bit harder to get vocal training from the man who promises to make them singing stars without actually singing a note in the studio or on stage. They could have refused to sign the contract, too, but then, when would another opportunity like this come around again?

Verhoeven has a lot of sympathy for Robert and Fab, and after the two became the target of lots of anger and the butt of jokes that one might still hear today, that attitude feels deserved. After all, the real Pilatus and Morvan did push Farian and their American label to allow them to sing on records and at concerts.

However, their European accents and not-ready-for-minor-scrutiny singing capabilities weren't the stuff of hits or sold-out performances. "We made a deal with the devil," one of the pair says at a press conference after the facts of the fraud come to light, and honestly, who can blame a couple of young men with big dreams and the confidence—perhaps misplaced—that they could be the real deal one day for taking what they can get, when they can get it?

There's a certain naïveté here that's a combination of amusing and tragic. Verhoeven's sympathy for Robert and Fab ensures that the duo is never the joke, even when they do try to sing or when the tape they're lip-syncing to at a concert gets stuck in a loop. The jokes have been made for decades already, and the filmmaker's satirical jabs are aimed at the more appropriate targets: the industry that made Milli Vanilli possible, the inherently fraudulent nature of fame, and the kind of stories that elevate such hollow matters into the stuff of inspiration.

The clichéd nature of the script, then, is probably the most pointed gag in the film. Here, we get more of the usual stuff. The duo's name comes to be because Ingrid's nickname is Milli and the group is eating ice cream while they're devising it. Frank comes up with the chorus to "Baby Don't Forget My Number" while on the phone with Ingrid and in bed with another woman, who tells him not to forget her digits. Verhoeven plays such moments straight enough that one might assume they're sincere, but to take them at face value is to forget the core of the Milli Vanilli story: It's all based in fakery.

In presenting this story within the framework of a by-the-numbers biography, Verhoeven is also dismantling how fake those other works of hagiography can be, as well as how the allure of celebrity and wealth can overshadow anything creative and artistic. There's a cheeky montage here, in which Robert and Fab become determined to dedicate themselves to becoming legitimate singers, only for the scenes of practice and exercise to gradually transform into them getting drunk and doing cocaine with their vocal coach. Fame encroaches on even the best of intentions.

If anything, Girl You Know It's True is sincere in its depiction of Robert and Fab as willing but, still, wronged participants in the ruse that would destroy that fame and their reputations. As played by Njie and Ali with easy charm and the increasing burden of living a lie they don't want to tell, they are tragic figures, who only gave everyone else what they wanted—at the cost of themselves.

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