In cinemas from Fri 08 May 2015

Christian Petzold / Germany / 2014 / 98 minutes

Phoenix, by German filmmaker Christian Petzold, explores the pandemic of wilful ignorance of the mass murder of the Jewish people that persisted for years after the Second World War. The film takes this denial of reality and places it in the context of one woman’s life in Berlin in the months following the end of the conflict.

Nelly (a haunted Nina Hoss) is the eponymous phoenix, rising from the ashes of the concentration camps after miraculously surviving a bullet to the head in Auschwitz. Reconstructive surgery renders her unrecognisable to her husband Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld), who instead sees a stranger capable of posing as his wife and enabling him to collect the vast fortune resulting from the extermination of Nelly’s entire family. Surprisingly, Nelly goes along with scheme and becomes her own imposter, allowing Johnny to dress her in “his wife’s” clothes and educate her about their life together.

While Phoenix is on one hand the story of Nelly rebuilding the identity which was taken from her in the camps, it is also an examination of German attitudes to Holocaust survivors in the immediate aftermath of the war.

The film is inundated with characters desperately trying to ignore the evidence of their own eyes in favour of a rose-tinted fantasy that Nelly is forced to become a part of. While Nelly worries that no-one will believe that she could arrive on a train from the concentration camps wearing make-up, high heels and a dress, Johnny understands that their friends will be more than willing to accept an obvious fiction over a difficult reality.

Some unexpected scene changes, sudden loud noises and erratic switches between night and day contribute to the sense of unreality that pervades the film, while Nelly’s close friend Lene (Nina Kunzendorf) provides some reassuring anger at events unfolding beyond her control or understanding.

Phoenix is a compelling exploration of one woman’s sense of self and the seldom discussed immediate post-war years in Germany. Strong central performances manage to hold the audience’s attention through some slow-paced moments, and the film’s final act builds to a moving and restrained moment of revelation.