Jerichow (2008)
Country: GER
Technical: col 93m
Director: Christian Petzold
Cast: Benno Fürmann, Nina Hoss, Hilmi Sözer
Synopsis:
A fundamentally decent ex-soldier, trying to make the best of a dishonourable discharge and indebtedness, is employed by a Turkish entrepreneur he helps out of a road incident. Despite the latter's possessiveness and suspicious nature, he is drawn into complicity with the man's attractive wife, whose circumstances resemble his own.
Review:
Petzold reworks James M. Cain's Postman to pull into focus the economic indebtedness of the lovers. As Laura says, 'You can't love if you don't have money'. Both are beaten physically for their attempts to take short cuts to liquidity, but their attraction only makes them more desperate. As usual, the director uses generalised realism (a coffee filter machine brewing off camera) to sneak under the wire more material details (a cigarette lighter), though it seems Laura might have got away with a simple admission that they had returned to that spot during the husband's absence. In the end the lovers' characters are perhaps not sufficiently developed to make the denouement believable.
Country: GER
Technical: col 93m
Director: Christian Petzold
Cast: Benno Fürmann, Nina Hoss, Hilmi Sözer
Synopsis:
A fundamentally decent ex-soldier, trying to make the best of a dishonourable discharge and indebtedness, is employed by a Turkish entrepreneur he helps out of a road incident. Despite the latter's possessiveness and suspicious nature, he is drawn into complicity with the man's attractive wife, whose circumstances resemble his own.
Review:
Petzold reworks James M. Cain's Postman to pull into focus the economic indebtedness of the lovers. As Laura says, 'You can't love if you don't have money'. Both are beaten physically for their attempts to take short cuts to liquidity, but their attraction only makes them more desperate. As usual, the director uses generalised realism (a coffee filter machine brewing off camera) to sneak under the wire more material details (a cigarette lighter), though it seems Laura might have got away with a simple admission that they had returned to that spot during the husband's absence. In the end the lovers' characters are perhaps not sufficiently developed to make the denouement believable.
Country: GER
Technical: col 93m
Director: Christian Petzold
Cast: Benno Fürmann, Nina Hoss, Hilmi Sözer
Synopsis:
A fundamentally decent ex-soldier, trying to make the best of a dishonourable discharge and indebtedness, is employed by a Turkish entrepreneur he helps out of a road incident. Despite the latter's possessiveness and suspicious nature, he is drawn into complicity with the man's attractive wife, whose circumstances resemble his own.
Review:
Petzold reworks James M. Cain's Postman to pull into focus the economic indebtedness of the lovers. As Laura says, 'You can't love if you don't have money'. Both are beaten physically for their attempts to take short cuts to liquidity, but their attraction only makes them more desperate. As usual, the director uses generalised realism (a coffee filter machine brewing off camera) to sneak under the wire more material details (a cigarette lighter), though it seems Laura might have got away with a simple admission that they had returned to that spot during the husband's absence. In the end the lovers' characters are perhaps not sufficiently developed to make the denouement believable.