Starring Paula Beer, Franz Rogowski, Maryam Zaree, Jacob Matschenz, Anne Ratte-Polle. Directed by Christian Petzold.
Undine starts in a fashion that is more or less the law for any film with French money in it: two people sit in a nice cafe and proceed to break up. What follows is a ninety-minute case of the mood taking over.
To say too much would be to spoil the unfolding mystery of the film, but to begin, Christian Petzold writes and directs with strong restraint. It’s a film of subtle nuance. Not much is given away, and when things are revealed it’s done in a low key manner. The score all the time tinkles away on the piano without building to anything.
Arguably this is the point; it is a film meant to build on intrigue and on atmosphere, but the truth is ultimately it doesn’t amount to much. It is, for lack of a better word, a bit boring. A lot of the conversations are very dull, and while it is clearly setting up an atmosphere to be used later, it’s not as smart as it thinks it is.
All off this would be a critical issue were it not for Paula Beer’s standout performance as Undine. She has a quiet intensity on screen, her face, in particular her eyes, tell you what you need to know at any given moment even as the film wants to hold back on as much possible.
One scene in which an act of violence occurs leaves us just with Beer’s reaction, as haunting as it is mesmerising, holding our attention as we attempt to read her expression – is it pain? Anguish? Satisfaction? And that’s the point, this film doesn’t really want us to know too much, it’s not a film with long drawn out explanations, it’s one of growing dread.
As the film grows more abstract you begin not to care about the inconsistency of its — often mythically filmed — narrative, you start to understand it’s all about fate and destiny. Even so, the low-fi way in which the film deals with what might be metaphysical could cause alienation in the audience; too silly for the straight-faced crowd, too straight-faced for the silly crowd.
This blend would be a bigger problem if Petzold and his cinematographer Hans Fromm didn’t know how to compose beautiful shots that make the most of space; the framing is impeccable, with every frame used to its full potential.
It is then a film that will enchant some and alienate others, but this French-German co-production has moments of beauty and a central performance that hold it up far above its weaker elements.
