Undine (2021)
dir. Christian Petzold
Rated: N/A
image: ©2021 IFC Films
German director Christian Petzold has put his spin on the centuries-old tale of the undine – pronounced uhn-deen-ah in German; uhn-deen in English – with his new tragic romance. If you aren’t familiar, undines are elemental spirits associated with water, almost exclusively portrayed as female. The legend goes that in order to gain an immortal soul, an undine must marry a human. If the human falls in love with another, the undine must kill him and return to the water. Hans Christian Andersen, and, as we all know, Disney, tweaked the tale with The Little Mermaid. Irish filmmaker Neil Jordan also made a version of the myth in 2009, titled Ondine, starring Colin Farrell.
I haven’t really spoiled anything for you with that first paragraph. After all, the main character’s name is Undine, which is more popular as a name in Europe than in the U.S., and she announces the curse hanging over her within the first five minutes of the picture. In the first scene, we find out that Undine’s love, Johannes, has fallen for someone else. Undine warns him, “If you leave me, I’ll have to kill you.” But then an interesting thing happens; she doesn’t kill Johannes. Instead, she meets and falls in love with Christoph.
Set in the present-day, Undine’s modern update of the legend is fresh and heartfelt. At the same time, the movie confirms that even though how we humans go about finding love has changed, what most of us are looking for has not. We want someone who will be faithful to us; we want to give ourselves wholly to someone.
Petzold, who wrote the screenplay in addition to directing, captures beautifully the early stages of love. Undine and Christoph’s romance is intense stuff, almost, as the cliché goes, like a drug addiction. The director stages a meet-cute to match. Christoph has just heard Undine, who is a historian, give a lecture on the history of Berlin. He approaches her afterwards in a café, across the street from the museum where she works, in order to ask her out. A clumsy mishap by Christoph causes a huge aquarium in the café to shatter, dousing the both of them with water. The underwater diver figurine in the aquarium that washes up beside the couple becomes a potent symbol of their love, especially since Christoph is himself an industrial diver who makes welding repairs to underwater structures.
That coincidence might be a bit too on the nose for the story Petzold is telling, but in his hands, it feels natural rather than contrived. It also lends itself to some haunting underwater imagery throughout the film. And while Undine is a somber melodrama, Petzold does show flashes of a sly sense of humor.
In one scene, Christoph thinks Undine has drowned after her strange encounter with Big Gunther the catfish, the local celebrity of the lake where they’re scuba diving. In his effort to revive her, he begins singing the Bee Gees hit Stayin’ Alive to time his chest compressions, because the tune was publicized a decade ago as having the perfect rhythm for performing CPR. (Sadly, that has been debunked by medical professionals.) It’s a moment of levity that surprised me. It never feels out of place, though, because we know that Undine is the last person who might be in danger of drowning.
It’s also an inspired choice to make Undine, a presumably millennia-old creature, a historian. The bits of her lecture about the history of Berlin that she recites throughout the movie are fascinating in their own right. Petzold uses these sequences for some mystical transitions, like when the model of Berlin she’s using as a visual aide slowly dissolves to reveal the corresponding location where she has told Johannes to wait for her at the café across the street.
The movie’s sound design also sneaks in incongruous elements, like the faint sound of rushing water as Undine looks out the window of a (landlocked) speeding commuter train. Moments like this give the movie an otherworldly feel that ties into its mythological foundation.
The emotional core of the movie rests in the chemistry between the two leads. Paula Beer and Franz Rogowski are wonderfully matched as Undine and Christoph. The two were praised for their chemistry in Petzold’s mind-bending 2018 film, Transit. It’s easy to see why he wanted to put the two together as young lovers in his new film. Every embrace, every moment of passion between the two feels authentic and reminded me of my own experiences of the endorphin-driven state of falling in love with someone.
The connection between Beer and Rogowski makes the twist that comes late in the film – when the curse that Undine has avoided finally catches up with her – all the more painful. Their on-screen passion is akin to that of Joanna Kulig and Tomasz Kot in Paweł Pawlikowski’s superb 2018 Polish film Cold War. Undine and Christoph’s star-crossed romance is made richer by Petzold’s almost exclusive use of the second adagio movement from Bach’s Concerto in D minor. The plaintive piano, which Petzold sometimes cuts off in mid-phrase to accentuate his own scene changes, strikes a melancholy note for the story.
I resisted Petzold’s theme in Undine that progress is impossible. The title character expresses as much in one scene showing one of her presentations about the history of Berlin. She describes how a museum in the heart of the great German city was repurposed from an 18th century ruler’s palace; the museum is not a new thing, but is part of the cycle of returning to what’s come before. The same holds for the tragic end of the romance at the heart of the movie. Petzold has crafted a delicate, heartfelt tale of love, and with the help of his two leads, it’s one that feels utterly authentic.
Why it got 4 stars:
- Undine is a mystical, moving love story. Christian Petzold has updated the myth to our current time while preserving a touch of the miraculous.
Things I forgot to mention in my review, because, well, I'm the Forgetful Film Critic:
- Big Gunther the catfish is clearly the real hero of this movie.
- Franz Rogowski is the German Joaquin Phoenix. Google him and tell me I’m wrong. Paula Beer reminded me of someone too, but I couldn’t quite place it. Maybe a German mashup of Elizabeth Banks and Rachel McAdams? Any other ideas out there?
- My interest was already piqued when I heard a review of Petzold’s Transit. After seeing Undine, Transit is definitely on my list.
Close encounters with people in movie theaters:
- I saw Undine through a studio screener link. It’s currently in select theatres and available for rent on all major digital and VOD platforms.