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Movies Forum Index » Movie Reviews Forum » Review: Yella (2007)
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| Mark R. Leeper |
 Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2008 4:52 pm |
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YELLA
(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: German film director/writer Christian
Petzold's YELLA is a suspenseful film carried off
without the viewer knowing what the suspense is all
about. It is a film about a capable but very
material woman making her way in a new town. She
turns her back on her unlucky former husband and
goes to western Germany where the financial
prospects are better. This is a film where what is
happening in the margins becomes increasingly more
interesting than the main story. During the course
of this film something strange is happening in
conjunction with the main story, but the viewer is
never sure what. The mystery happening in the
margins of this story is more interesting than the
mainline plot. Nina Hoss won a Silver Bear prize
for Best Actress for her role in YELLA, and the film
won Best Picture by the German Film Critics
Association. It also won Best Picture, Director,
Actress and Cinematography Lola awards (the German
equivalent of the Oscar). Rating: high +1
(-4 to +4) or 6/10
Yella (played by Nina Hoss) is leaving her home town of
Wittenberge, leaving her husband, and leaving her old life. Her
husband Ben (Hinnerk Schönemann) at one time looked like a man of
great prospects, but his business plans failed and at the same
time so did their relationship. Yella is a smart woman with a
good knowledge of accounting, but she is also a very material
person. Ben can no longer support her in the style to which she
wants to remain accustomed. On top of which Ben is tightening
his grip on her and she knows she must leave him. Ben tries to
one last futile stunt to hold onto her and nearly kills both of
them.
Yella now knows she made the right decision to leave. She is
going to escape from her town in the eastern part of Germany and
go to the richer prospects to Hanover in the western part. Still
shaken by her brush with death, Yella goes to a new town where
she has been offered a high-paying accounting job. Now it is her
luck that is going sour. The job turns out to be a fraud and she
is just being used. Just when things look bleak she runs into
Philipp (Devid Striesow). Philipp is himself a sort of financial
wheeler-dealer who treads a narrow line between honesty and
dishonesty. Expecting to just to use Yella as a distraction for
the other side in negotiations he discovers that Yella can be
more valuable for her mind than for her body. But Yella herself
can be a dangerous ally. Does she want Philipp or does she want
what she can take him for? And what will she do about Ben, who
has followed her to her new town?
The characters in YELLA are a little cold to American tastes.
There are a number of reasons why this may be true. Part of it
may be a cultural difference between how Germans portray Germans
on the screen and how Americans portray Americans. Part may be
because of the specific situation in the film. In addition, much
of the plot is about financial dealings. While everybody is
fascinated with money, somehow it is a subject that does not do
well on the screen. Alan J. Pakula's 1981 film ROLLOVER comes
really close to being financial science fiction and a stock-
market-based thriller and it is about as thrilling as anyone
could make incidents whose impact is shown by numbers on the
screen. It is as hard to make finance exciting in a movie as it
is to make Pilgrims erotic. It just does not work. But if the
finance is not interesting, the metaphysical and fantasy-tinged
margins of this story compensate. Petzold creates prominent
contrasts in the film. The film contrasts what has become of the
old East Germany with the west of Germany. It bounces back and
forth from stifling business offices to frequent interludes with
nature with birds, trees, and especially water. There are
recurrent images of water as a symbol of death and of rebirth.
The press materials that came with the film mentioned that the
film was inspired by a certain semi-well-known American film and
one that I happen to like a great deal. Unfortunately, knowing
the connection with the American film is a massive spoiler. It
tells much too much about where the story is really going. The
original, however, did more on what I can only assume is a small
fraction of the budget of YELLA. For those who have already seen
YELLA, I will leave a link at the bottom of this review for the
American film that inspired YELLA.
Christian Petzold's story-telling is slow but intriguing. He
builds suspense without defining letting the viewer know what to
be uneasy about. That is not easy to do. I rate YELLA a high +1
on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10.
Film Credits: <http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0806686/>
SPOILER: This film is strongly inspired by
<http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0055830/>
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Copyright 2008 Mark R. Leeper |
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