It’s one thing to get middle-aged men and women, with their sagging flesh, to pose nude for a photo shoot. But when those people have deformed bodies (short limbs, missing fingers) because their mothers took the drug Thalidomide when they were pregnant, it’s quite an accomplishment.
In the documentary “Nobody’s Perfect,” German director Niko von Glasow, himself a Thalidomide baby, talks 11 other victims into posing nude for a public arts project and a book.
More than 10,000 afflicted babies were born from 1957 through 1961, when the drug was finally banned for use by pregnant women. Half of the victims were in Germany, where the drug was made.
The film tastefully handles the sensitive subject, but it lacks the bite that a Michael Moore would have provided.
Von Glasow never really goes after the company that continued to sell Thalidomide to unsuspecting women even after the dangers were apparent.