Still from ‘Undine’, Christian Petzold. Source: RedDead720 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0btQogVzZU&ab_channel=EuropicturesItalia, copyrighted.
Paula Beer has won a European Film Award for Best Actress in ‘Undine’, Christian Petzold’s latest film which draws on Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué’s 19th Century fairy tale. It came out to mixed reviews in Germany and the UK, with The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw describing it as ‘a somewhat pointless film about an art historian who has a passionate affair with a diver’. Harsh, but it’s certainly piqued our interest! Despite general grumbles over plot and premise, reviewers agree the film retains Petzold’s compelling aesthetic, encapsulated in Andreas Platthaus’s review: ‘Schwarzromantik, Unheimlichkeit und Liebespathos sowie psychologischem Tiefgang bei filmästhetischer Sachlichkeit’. Beer receives unanimous praise for her portrayal of the film’s namesake. You can watch the trailer here.
Paula Beer and her co-star Franz Rogowski are Petzold’s new muses, having first appeared together in his 2018 film ‘Transit’, to immense critical acclaim. They stand in for Nina Hoss, with whom Petzold collaborated on six films between 2001 and 2014, their relationship having been likened to that of Marlene Dietrich and Josef Von Sternberg. While Hoss has since been making waves in Hollywood, Beer at just 25 years old has already won a Silver Bear for Best Actress in the 2020 Berlinale for ‘Undine’. In 2018, she also starred in Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s long-awaited ‘Never Look Away’, his first major German film since ‘Das Leben der Anderen’ back in 2006.
The trailer of 'Undine' (2020).