Ute Lemper
Everything Lemper is known for happened on a stage. The German singer and actress made her name on two of the great cabaret-adjacent parts in musical theatre: Sally Bowles in the original Paris production of Cabaret, which won her the 1987 Molière Award for Best Newcomer, and Velma Kelly in the revival of Chicago, played in both London and New York, which won her the 1998 Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical.
The film and television credits gathered here are the smaller half of that career, and they mostly cast her as some version of what she already is. Robert Altman put her in his fashion-week ensemble picture as Albertine. Woody Allen's Magic in the Moonlight bills her simply as Cabaret Singer, which is either lazy casting or precisely correct. Bogus gives her Babette in a family fantasy. Her earliest screen work on this page is German television, including the eighties drama The Legacy of Guldenburgs.
The interview and panel appearances here are a fair signal too. She is a performer who keeps being asked to sit down and talk about her repertoire, because the repertoire is the point and the films are not.
Movies (3)
TV (6)
Where to start with Ute Lemper
The screen work is a poor sample of her, so set expectations before you begin. Prêt-à-Porter is the one to watch first: Altman's fashion-week film is chaotic and wildly uneven, but it drops her into an ensemble of actual movie stars and she holds her frame in it.
Magic in the Moonlight is prettier and slighter, and her turn as a cabaret singer is effectively a filmed fragment of her stage self, which makes it the closest thing here to a document of the act. Bogus is a nineties family film and the odd one out. The Legacy of Guldenburgs is for completists working through German television. HARDtalk is the most revealing item on the list, because she is far better on her own work than any of these films are on her.