Christian Petzold’s feature film, Undine, starts with a woman threatening to execute her lover in the event of him leaving her. You may believe it due to how intensely Paula Beer delivers her character’s intention. Beer has already won Best Actress for it at the 2020 Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin. In Petzold’s film, Beer plays a character who embodies an old water spirit drifting in a modern and cold city. Undine also has a premise that reminds us of Night Tide, the Curtis Harrington film that loosely reworked the plot of the 1942 movie titled ‘Cat People’.
Under the director’s calm mastery, Undine’s mythical parts are kept in a secretive state, and it does not become too much of a supernatural film. The outcome is an odd tale of romance that keeps a solid grip even when its meanings stay elusive. Undine hit cinema halls across the nation earlier this June, including Los Angeles theaters.
Paula Beer’s main character, Undine, is a part-time historian who specializes in urban design and architecture. Undine’s regular job entails giving lectures to museum guests with an elaborate Berlin city model. After her beau, Jacob Matschenz’s Johannes, ends his relationship with her, Undine bounces back with a handsome and shy man. That man, Franz Rogowski’s Christoph, works as a commercial diver who repairs turbines situated below the surface of the water. Undine and Christoph’s first encounter involves an aquarium tank at a restaurant that bursts and then drenches the two.
Ominous signs of danger complicate the sweet, romantic relationship that comes after that meet-cute encounter. The main character’s name appears as an inscription on a slab below a lake. Undine almost drowns, but Christoph brings her back to life by pumping her chest as Bee Gees’ song ‘Staylin’ Alive’ plays in the scene. Johannes’s reappearance makes Christoph jealous, which then leads to an unpleasant chain of events. After that, a miracle happens.
Petzold got literary scholar training before he became one of the prominent filmmakers in Germany. He is also an artist with subdued, impeccably crafted and suspenseful movies that cut deep into freedom and love. In Undine, transposing an old misconception onto a modern-day narrative has meant that Petzold could explore the quandary of a person with a desire to be loved and to love that dooms the character to a tearful fate.
Positing this modern fairy story against a chilly and industrialized landscape, as the backdrop, subtly comments about how the social planning process has damaged the imagination that sustained Germans. After all, that is the same culture that also produced the likes of Goethe.
Undine is what many people might regard as a ‘slow-burner’ movie. That is to say, it has a pacing that may not suit everyone’s cinematic tastes or preferences. Petzold’s penchant for teasing viewers with enigmas is likely to put off some who seek a more solid genre commitment. Anyhow, it can have a strong emotional impact on viewers thanks mainly to its understated yet elegant style. Undine features Petzold’s frequent collaborator Hans Fromm. With his frequent cinematographer, Petzold suggests alternative viewpoints in the film through subjective, deftly-used camera angles. That applies to a closing shot that communicates a perfect sense of ambiguity.
Petzold makes the illusion complete with the recurring utilization of one of Bach’s haunting concertos. Undine’s two main characters make for an odd and appealing couple. The two also appeared in Petzold’s earlier movie entitled ‘Transit’, so it is safe to say that they have some chemistry.
The limpid eyes and red hair of Beer signify some wild creature kept at bay. On the other hand, Franz Rogowski effortlessly commands sympathy. For your information, Franz Rogowski is also an experienced dancer having a distinctive lisp and cleft lip. Iranian director and actor Maryam Zaree also comes up with a good performance here as the diving partner of Christoph.
Those disparate components make the movie an unlikely inclusion in a growing mermaid cinema canon, which also contains titles such as The Lure and The Lighthouse. Petzold has envisioned Undine as part of a series of three films about elemental romances. With coronavirus-related filming protocols being relaxed, the second project in that trilogy will be in high gear.