Phoenix

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 7/25/15 at 10:46pm

I saw Phoenix today and it was truly spectacular. This was my first time seeing one of Christian Petzold's films and now I'm ready to track down all of his past work. It looks like this is the fifth film he made with the star of Phoenix, Nina Hoss, and that makes me even more excited to check his stuff out. Her performance in Phoenix was STUNNING and she sold the perfect ending beautifully. I think I held my breath for the last two minutes.

It's hard to talk about the movie without giving too much away, but Hoss plays a Holocaust survivor whose face was horribly disfigured by the Nazis. Her friend finds her after the war and takes her to a doctor who attempts to reconstruct her features. He only is able to create a passing resemblance to her old self though.

Nelly learns that her entire family is dead, but her husband, a German non-Jew, may still be alive. She was poor before the war, but with all of her family dead she is set to inherit quite a sum of money. She meets up with her husband who doesn't recognize her, but sees the resemblance to his wife. He strikes up a deal with her to let him mold her in his supposed dead wife's image so they can get the money and split it. I won't say anymore about the plot, but there's a lot for the two actors to work with.

There are some nods to Vertigo and it feels like it could even be a (thematic) prequel to The Marriage of Maria Braun.

I truly can't recommend this enough and Hoss has easily given the best performance of the year thus far.