24FPS @ LFF 2020: Undine

Dir: Christian Petzold

Christian Petzold is a filmmaker who at once wears his influences on his sleeve and remixes them enough to make the resulting films very much his own (consider Phoenix's relationship to Vertigo and Eyes Without a Face, or Jerichow and Yella's riffs on The Postman Always Rings Twice and Carnival of Souls respectively). Undine is loosely inspired by a myth initially found in the alchemical writings of renaissance physician Paracelsus. The myth speaks of mermaid-like creatures who resemble humans but lack a soul, and to gain one they must marry a human, but if the man is unfaithful he is fated to die. As is his usual style, Petzold takes a few of the bones of this myth and embeds them in a story that is very much grounded in the real world.

Paula Beer's Undine is a historian working at a Government office in Berlin, giving talks on the architectural history of the city. On the morning her boyfriend Johannes (Jacob Matschenz) breaks up with her, she goes to find him at their local cafe, but instead encounters industrial diver Christoph (Franz Rogowski). They accidentally smash the cafe's fish tank, soaking them both and cutting Undine. When we next see them, they are in a relationship, which we continue to follow throughout the film.

Their connection perhaps honed through their work together in Petzold's previous film, Transit (to summarise its influences, think 'Kafkablanca') Beer and Rogowski are both excellent, solidly grounding the more fanciful aspects of the film with performances that commit totally to the emotion of each moment, and they have intense chemistry throughout. We meet them the second time when they are clearly relatively newly, but comfortably, in their relationship, and there is a hunger especially about the way Beer approaches it, something we see notably in her initial frustration when Christoph puts the brakes on when things are about to get sexual and asks Undine to give him the lecture she has been practising for the next day. On the surface, Undine may seem slight; a relationship drama that takes a late second act diversion into possible supernatural occurrences and mythical fantasy, but there is perhaps more to it than that.

Undine's lectures look at the changing character of Berlin, from a split city to a whole one and the way that transformed the architecture of the city, even bringing back buildings from the past. I think Petzold wants us to view this as analogous to the shifting states of relationships, from Undine's initial pleading with Johannes not to leave her to her relationship with Christoph. It could also be argued that he's discussing shifting states of being, even beyond the question of the connection between Undine as a character and the mythological figure. Through his work, Christoph is to some degree a being of the water and early on Undine needs to be saved from drowning, which has echoes in later passages of the film.

For all the thematic concerns and all the questions of the relationship between myth, imagination, and reality, at its heart, Undine feels honestly romantic, perhaps ultimately about memory and touchstones (the diver statue that travels through the film, variously with Christoph and Undine). I get the sense that it deliberately doesn't give up all that it's about on a first viewing, and I especially want to pair it with a rewatch of Yella, to examine how each film' and each character's connection with water is expressed. That said, this is still an extremely rewarding and rather beautiful film even without the full context of Petzold's filmography. It's a slow burn, but one worth immersing yourself in.

★★★★