Anticipation for “Undine” has been palpable on the lead-in to the 70th Berlinale, being Christian Petzold’s sixth feature to be seen at the festival—particularly off the back of last year’s acclaimed “Transit,” which competed for the Golden Bear. And it appears this anticipation has broadly been justified. While “Undine” is initially rather languid, it soon becomes a fascinating and very gorgeously realized thing to behold.
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“Undine” is predominantly seen from the perspective of the eponymous protagonist, Undine (frequent Petzold collaborator, Paula Beer). The film has a relatively unassuming start: A tense rendezvous outside a Berlin cafe between Undine and her boyfriend, Johannes (Jacob Matschenz), as the latter threatens to leave her for another woman. ”If you leave me you have to die,” Undine states factually. It’s taken to be true—the threat is ambiguous, but Undine manifestly holds the keys. She exudes dominance. “Undine” goes on to explore from where the woman’s power stems—weaving between realism and fantasy; between the power of lust, and that of the supernatural.
Their relationship ends, and again, ambiguity reigns—Undine having apparently not made true of her threat. Some time later, we’re introduced to her line of work—a successful freelance museum guide, attending to international tourists on the behalf of the Senate Department for Urban Development and Housing. These sequences, where Undine waxes lyrical about the history of Berlin’s architecture, come infrequently but are an interesting pause. Her knowledge of the city is encyclopedic, extending from architectural movements to the severance in styles between the old East and West. The manifest grip she has on the craft extends her domination, furthered more by her insistence on speaking German with her guests.
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It’s after one of her talks that Undine bumps into Christof (Franz Rogowski), a kind-hearted, passionate man who works as an industrial diver. The latter trait is the most important. Just prior to their meeting, Undine is seemingly beckoned by the model of a diving suit within an aquarium. It smashes over them both, washing them to the floor. As they lay in a pile of fish, glass, and ornaments, they seem to swim in one another’s gaze. They fall in love at this very moment, and from this point, the film veers more strictly into the fantastical.
The film is fascinated with the ambiguities of the watery depths, of which Christof’s profession is designed to easily interrogate. While the film, for the most part, flows as a more traditional romance on land, it becomes phantasmagorical when dropped below the surface. At one point, Christof and Undine dive together; Christof has found Undine’s name scrawled at the foot of a pier, deep within a lake in which he frequently works. She momentarily disappears before floating to the surface, her diving apparatus stripped. Christof resuscitates her—on awakening she coughs no water, despite having apparently drowned.
It’s in this manner that Petzold repeatedly implies Undine could fit within the sea’s existing mythologies—that she may be a siren or a mermaid—but stops just short of clarity. This ambiguity is wonderfully suspenseful and maintains an excellent pace. Undine later visits Johannes while he’s swimming at his home pool, implying that her power is drawn from water, cementing this sense of myth and Undine’s absolute power over men. Perhaps, even, Undine is a deity.
This development of Undine’s character really does creep up on you. Paula Beer is sublime in the role. “Undine” could easily be a middle-of-the-road fairy tale, evocative only of old sea shanties and the trope of wicked women. But Beer brings an important vulnerability to Undine, which serves to heighten her existing ambiguities, providing ample intrigue, and significantly elevating the film’s key strengths.
Comparisons to “The Shape of Water” will surely be rife, if not owing to the film’s underwater aesthetic sensibility, then for (ostensibly) being a fantastical romance between a human, and, apparently, a creature of the sea (albeit this one being far less scaley). But this is a restrictive, and quite frustratingly trite, angle to view “Undine” from. Petzold’s unsettling film is awash with wonderful ambiguities and strives to challenge both its audience and filmmaking conventions. They’re incomparable and largely succeed through their independent nuances. [B+]
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