KEY POINTS:
Herald rating: * * * *
Cast: Monica Bleibtreu, Hannah Herzsprung
Director: Chris Kraus
Running time: 112 mins
Rating: R13 (contains violence, offensive language and content that may offend) Screening: Rialto
Verdict: Dense German psychodrama is harrowing but impressive.
The winner of the German Oscar-equivalent for best picture last year, this is a harrowingly tough watch but also a dense and brilliantly acted psychodrama.
It concerns the relationship between Traude Kruger (Bleibtreu), who has devoted half a century to teaching piano to inmates of a women's prison, and Jenny (Herzsprung), a murderer with a horrific past and a preternatural skill at the keyboard.
When Jenny comes under Kruger's tutelage, the scene is set for an intense dance of death: the octogenarian uncovers the young woman's secret but has a dark past of her own.
The film commendably avoids, indeed upends, all the redemption narrative cliches. No inspiring teacher ever said, as Kruger does to her student, "I despise you, but you have a gift and a duty to develop that gift".
The two central performances are masterpieces of contained and often uncontained rage. Jenny is plainly a deeply damaged soul and it takes some time for us to realise what nourishes Kruger's ruthless indifference and how deeply it is rooted.
Director Kraus, who also wrote, concocts an ending which threatens to tip over into schmaltz but has a surprise up its sleeve. Whatever else the film might be accused of, you can't call it sentimental. Impressive.
