Written by Christian Petzold and Harun Farocki
Based on the novel by Hubert Monteilhet
Starring Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld and Nina Kunzendorf
Germany, 2014
A Holocaust survivor, having undergone facial reconstruction surgery after a botched execution, returns to Berlin shortly after the war ends. She no longer looks exactly like herself, but does look close enough to attract the attention of the man she was married to before the war, who believes his wife died in the concentration camps, but wants to use the survivor to pose as his wife so he can collect the inheritance from her family, which has been entirely wiped out.
The survivor goes along with this because she's still in love with her husband, but here's the catch -- her friend tells her it was probably her husband who turned her in to the Nazis in the first place. The survivor is unable (or doesn't want) to believe this, and enters into a warped relationship with her husband as they plot to stage her "return" from the camps.
This is a great, suspenseful neo-noir that effectively uses post-war Berlin as a backdrop for a story Hitchcock would have been proud of. There's shades of VERTIGO here, though, of course, it's a lot more loaded, given the subject matter and tone.
I don't want to give anything away, but I will say the conclusion is at once satisfying and beautiful, taking an already perfectly good film to an even higher level.
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