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In the aftermath of WWII, Nelly, a Jewish survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp, horribly disfigured from a bullet wound in her face, undergoes a series of facial reconstruction surgeries and decides to find her husband Johnny who works at the Phoenix club in Berlin. Undoubtedly, Nelly is stunning, yet, her new self is beyond recognition, so Johnny, the man who may have betrayed her to the Nazis, will never imagine that the woman in front of him who bears an uncomfortable and unsettling resemblance to his late wife, is indeed her. Without delay, and with the intention to collect the deceased’s inheritance, Nelly will go along with Johnny’s plot and she will impersonate the dead woman, giving the performance of a lifetime before friends and relatives in a complex game of deceit, duplicity, and ultimately, seduction. In the end, during this masquerade, as the fragile and broken Nelly tries to find out whether Johnny betrayed her or not, she will have to dig deep into her wounded psyche and inevitably choose between revenge and forgiveness. |
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| Ratings: | IMDB: 7.3/10 | |
| Released: | September 25, 2014 | |
| Runtime: | 98 min | |
| Genres: | Drama Music History | |
| Countries: | Germany Poland | |
| Companies: | Schramm Film Koerner & Weber Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR) Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) Tempus Schramm Film ARTE WDR Bayerischer Rundfunk | |
| Cast: | Nina Hoss Ronald Zehrfeld Nina Kunzendorf | |
| Crew: | Harun Farocki Christian Petzold Hubert Monteilhet | |
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This is an example of Perfect Filmmaking. I am bowled over. At once trying not to cry and also jumping up and down in my seat over the perfection of what I just witnessed. That was my fourth in-a-row viewing of director Christian Petzold’s films starring Nina Hoss. The two of them pare down all that is unnecessary and shoot for realism and depth. The films are slow and pack very little action and even dialogue. What is necessary is shown and told. Hoss’s acting is supreme and what she does with her facial expressions - you don’t even realize she’s not speaking, it’s all being said. My god! I am flipping out! The film ends the way it has to end and I don’t even want to give the tone away. I am hit with joy that I just witnessed a small masterpiece and at the same time, feel devastated over the subject matter.
Many of Petzold’s films are an homage to Hitchcock and this one reverberates with themes from Vertigo. A woman is made to change and look, act, and dress like the object of the male’s desire. Only in this case, the desire is for money. And the scenery is within the rubbles of Berlin in 1945 right after the war has ended. I think it “reads” much like a Patricia Highsmith (Strangers on a Train, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Carol) novel might and one that Hitchcock would film, or Orson Welles. It’s a Neo-Noir chiller. But it is not a mystery ride inasmuch as it is a slow climb into the soul of a woman who, having survived, barely, the camps, coming back to try and find the love of her man that gave her the hope and courage to endure and survive; but she finds something entirely different.
Take a ride of guilt, shame, loss and betrayal wrapped in a huge dose of reality to see what perfect filmmaking looks like! If I hadn’t just seen Drive My Car, I would say this is the best movie I have seen all year.
P.S., This is the second movie in a trilogy of films he made about “love under difficult circumstances.” The first one is Barbara (2012 - love in East Germany) and the third, Transit (2018 starring Paula Beer from Bad Banks - love her!).