Last updated on June 8, 2025
A film by Christian Petzold
With: Paula Beer, Barbara Auer, Matthias Brandt, Enno Trebs, Philip Froissant, Victoire Laly, Marcel Heupermann, Christian Koerner, Hendrik Heutmann, Christoph Glaubacker
On a weekend trip to the countryside, Laura miraculously survives a car crash. Physically unhurt but deeply shaken, she is taken in by a local woman who witnessed the accident and now cares for Laura with motherly devotion. When her husband and adult son also give up their initial resistance to Laura’s presence, the four of them slowly build up some family-like routine. But soon they can no longer ignore their past…
Our rate: *(*)
Christian Petzold comes to Cannes for the first time with a simple, very simple film that relies on Paula Beer, her rather mechanical acting, her magnetic power, in her gestures or a wry smile, and injects into the story an almost metaphysical reflection on a possible link with past lives, an innate attraction between two beings who are complete opposites, except for emotional gaps to fill, periods of life that make each find interest in bonding with the other, in an almost commanding way, as if fate were involved. Then Petzold shifts his narrative, Pasolini-style, to explore other possibilities, on the side of the family disruption that such an encounter provokes, and he imagines a development opposite to Pasolini’s Theorem. The attractive external element does not destroy the family through its actions, but on the contrary, the family itself rejects the danger represented by the attraction that the young intruder exerts on all its members, after other possibilities have been considered. Relatively linear, surprising in its low density (like Ondine, Petzold tells his story in a very refined way, like a counterpoint, taking his time over seemingly ordinary discussions that are not necessarily of dramatic interest, perhaps to better fascinate us. But the exercise does not necessarily work, it can leave an impression of incompleteness.
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