To understand Christian Petzold's new film Undine at all, you need to have at least some basic understanding of the undines of German mythology. Part of the inspiration for Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid, these sea spirits can walk on land if they fall in love with a human, but if this love doesn't last, they have to kill their ex-lover.
The workings of the myth are not really explained at all in the movie, and until the movie's final act, a viewer might not realize they're watching a fantasy film at all. In this movie, Undine (Paula Beer) is introduced in human form, a museum tour guide threatening her cheating boyfriend Johannes (Jacob Matschenz) with violence if he leaves her. The one hint of her fantastic origins beyond her name is that she talks about this violence as if it's some inevitable curse rather than something she wants to do.
Undine puts off this inevitability by finding a new love, a diver named Christoph (Franz Rogowski). The chemistry between the two is strong (Beer and Rogowski played doomed lovers before in Petzold's previous drama Transit), and Undine works solidly as a passionate yet understated realistic love story. However, the fairy tale elements which ultimately shape the story's meaning would feel a lot more effective if they were more clearly dramatized and less abstracted.
Where the film is vague in its main narrative, it's incredibly specific and detailed when it comes to its discussion of Berlin's architecture. Undine's job as a museum tour guide results in many monologues about the history of the city's architecture. Most ridiculously, she even practices her script as foreplay with Christoph. It almost feels like Petzold is more interested in the architectural discussions than the actual story he's telling, akin to how Victor Hugo was much more concerned with Notre Dame as a building than he was with the hunchback melodrama he built around it.
Undine isn't a bad movie by any means, but it's a confusing and ultimately underwhelming one. It has many intriguing elements and the actors are all great, but the story just doesn't come together as effectively as it could have with a bit more narrative and thematic clarity. It feels slight, and in all likelihood forgettable.
Undine stars Paula Beer, Franz Rogowski, Maryam Zaree and Jacob Matschenz. It will be released by IFC Films in theaters and on demand later this year.