Taking most of its plot from Hubert Monteilhet’s 1961 novel, “Return from the Ashes,” the new movie by German filmmaker Christian Petzold feels like something out of that era. With its contrived plot and high-gloss possibilities, “Phoenix” would have been an ideal project for Lana Turner and director Douglas Sirk after “Imitation of Life.”
It begins at the end of World War II, with the re-emergence of the heavily-bandaged Nelly (the soulful Nina Hoss) from Auschwitz. She has been disfigured by a gunshot wound to the face; her friend Lene (Nina Kuzendorf) helps nurse her back to health, urging Nelly to claim her postwar reparations and join other surviving Jews in Palestine.
Nelly, however, is fixated on her husband Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld, who really looks like an old-fashioned movie star), but he thinks she is dead and doesn’t recognize her with her new face. He has an idea, however — the rat. If this mystery woman will pretend to be Nelly, they can claim her inheritance and split the money.
The resulting masquerade has many perverse moments. And “Phoenix” is an extremely well-made picture, with fine lead performances by Hoss and Zehrfeld, who acted together in Petzold’s fascinating “Barbara” (2012).
But I have to admit I found the serious, sober approach just a little on-the-nose. Everything here means exactly what it’s meant to mean, and each scene makes a single point, albeit quite well.
With a few lively exceptions: Upon re-entering her old home, Nelly hears from her blunt housekeeper that they still can’t open the windows around here, because of the flies. “The war didn’t seem to bother them at all,” she grouses, without irony — a brilliant line.
But in general — compared to a wildly wicked comedy like Billy Wilder’s “A Foreign Affair” (1948), which also cruised through the wide-open world of black-market Berlin — ”Phoenix” seems obvious.
It’s still a solid film, if you go with the melodramatic premise. And the final 10 minutes truly redeem whatever shortcomings the storytelling had to that point, as Johnny brings his dishonest plan to its conclusion at the same time Nelly has something up her sleeve.
It’s a knockout of a finish, and brings full circle the film’s fascination with the Kurt Weill song “Speak Low” — and the unsustainability of pretending the past didn’t happen, an important theme in so much German art of the last 70 years.
“Phoenix” (three stars)
A well-made (if somewhat contrived) post-Holocaust picture from German director Christian Petzold. A disfigured woman (Nina Hoss) returns from Auschwitz to find her husband doesn’t recognize her — but he does have a cynical plan to cash in on his wife’s “death.” In German, with English subtitles.
Rating: PG-13, for subject matter
Showing: SIFF Cinema Uptown
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