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Jul 27, 2015 By John Oursler Web Exclusive

Now five films deep, the filmmaking collaboration between director Christian Petzold and actor Nina Hoss is cinema’s richest and most rewarding. Their newest beguiling masterpiece, the mysterious and tense Phoenix, continues a brutal examination of the consequences of German history, focusing on Nelly, a woman disfigured from Auschwitz and, as the title infers, emerging from the ashes.

A singer pre-war accompanied by her pianist husband Johnny (fell Petzold regular Ronald Zehrfeld), Nelly is introduced broken and bandaged, her face entirely obscured as she begins the difficult search for a new one. She wants to look as much like “herself” as she can, understandably, even against the advice of her friend, Lene, and doctor, who propose a new life unburdened by the daily recognition of her former self. Nelly remains steadfast in her aesthetic resolve, primarily so she can reconnect with Johnny, also mysteriously against the advice of Lene.

Unlike their other collaborations, Phoenix maintains Petzold’s signature intrigue while also proudly touting its influences, from the initial similarity to the wounded protagonist in Eyes Without a Face, to the ingeniously feminist inversion of Vertigo that follows. Nelly finds Johnny, though her “new” face precludes his recognition of her as the woman to whom he was married. She seeks him out at a club, the titular location, though he does not know who she is other than a vague resemblance to a woman he once knew. His quest to obtain an inheritance of Nelly’s coincides with her insistence to reconnect with him, as a noirish cat-and-mouse unfolds in which Nelly seeks the truth about why her friend Lene disapproves of Johnny, who in turns tries to turn Nelly into a passable version of a person she of course already is, his wife.

The film’s final moments are quietly harrowing in a way that befits Hoss’s ability to communicate through subtle gesture. Phoenix presents an alternative history of a Holocaust survivor, but more than that, is a staunchly feminist work that succeeds on the cinematic chemistry between creator and muse.

www.ifcfilms.com/films/phoenix

Author rating: 9/10