What a movie.
Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld, and Nina Kunzendorf star in "Phoenix," a 2014 film based on the French novel "Return from the Ashes". There was a previous film made from this novel, actually called Return from the Ashes in 1965. I remembered seeing that movie as a kid and finally found it again. It's very good, but this film is better.
Nina Hoss plays Nelly, a concentration camp survivor who was shot in the face. A government worker, Lena (Kunzendorf) in charge of helping victims, brings her to a plastic surgeon. Nelly is adamant that she wants to look exactly as she did before. The doctor can only promise to try. When she asks Lena who is paying for all this, Lena tells her that her entire family is dead and she has come into quite a bit of money.
When Nelly sees herself, the face is foreign to her and she says, "I don't exist." She stays in an apartment with Lena. Lena has found an apartment for her in Palestine, where Lena is also moving.
Nelly wants to find her husband Johnny (Zehrfeld), a non-Jew, but Lena cautions her that he betrayed her to the Nazis. She was a singer and he a pianist, so she goes to various clubs, but finally finds him working in a club called Phoenix as a dishwasher.
Johnny doesn't recognize her, but he asks her if she wants some work. He explains to her that he can't get his hands on his wife's money. He wants her to impersonate Nelly, show up alive, claim her inheritance, and in return, he will pay her.
At first, Nelly refuses, then relents. He shows her a photo of Hedy Lamar and says his wife modeled herself on that.
Nelly returns to Lena and tells her that she's going to do the impersonation and not go to Palestine. She will stay with Johnny. She knows he would never have betrayed her.
Director Christian Pezold has woven noirish tapestry about survival, love, betrayal, and guilt. It is reminiscent of Vertigo but with the specter of the Holocaust, much deeper and intense.
Nina Hoss is beyond perfection as Nelly, desperate for her old life, her old face, her husband, to wipe out all she has suffered. Like Zehrfeld, she says more with her expressions than with dialogue. Zehrfeld as Johnny presents a disturbing puzzle of denial and horrific guilt, so unbearable that he tries to recreate Nelly.
The last scene in this film, in its simplicity, is stunning and powerful.
A brilliant film, which you may want to view more than once to pick up details along the way.
