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Monday, February 12, 2018

PHOENIX (2014)

Clueless (even tasteless), award-winning embarrassment from Germany, a Post-WWII story about a Jewish survivor, horribly disfigured by the Nazis, who returns to Berlin in search of the non-Jewish piano-playing husband she never stopped loving . . . but who may have betrayed her. Only glitch, she’s had total face-reconstruction! Will he recognize her? (But Wait! That might be an advantage!) Has love survived? Will she discover all before he figures out ‘her’ secret? Most important of all, does it star Joan Crawford & Franchot Tone like a real 1940s meller? Hard to know what writer/director Christian Petzold, critics & Film-Fest jurors where thinking. This sort of lumpy stew could make sense with a highly stylized treatment, but played out as ‘kitchen-sink’ realism, in a flavorless, unconvincing recreation of ruined Berlin, it’s borderline insulting. Especially with convenient plotting that locates missing Piano Man in the chaos of divided Berlin in about five minutes; then has him figure out how to use her amazing physical similarity to his ‘dead’ wife for an inheritance grab in another five minutes. If he can only teach her how to pretend to be ‘her;’ never knowing that she's really 'she.' Sheesh!

DOUBLE-BILL: Petzold’s last film, BARBARA/’12, a 1980s-set East/West German thriller, is better than this, but also has the feel of a 1940s Hollywood meller.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK: As leitmotif (and final story beat), we get Kurt Weill’s ‘Speak Low’ (lyrics by Ogden Nash), from ONE TOUCH OF VENUS, a forgotten marvel of a musical. (Avoid the lousy film version.) Right show, wrong song: ‘I’m A Stranger Here Myself,’ from the same musical, is helpfully up-tempo and much more apt to the storyline. Here’s Mary Martin from the original cast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMA0e5QhUhA

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