‘Undine’: Catch of the Day

If you care about movie stars who weave subtle but ineffably powerful spells, you should, or already do, know Ms. Beer’s work. Still in her 20s, she has given memorable performances as a grief-stricken young woman in François Ozon’s 2016 “Frantz”; as an enchanting art student in Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s 2018 “Never Look Away” and as an anguished, elusive beauty in Mr. Petzold’s “Transit,” which was released here in 2019. (Her co-star in that film, as in “Undine,” was another extraordinary German actor, Franz Rogowski ; more about him, and them, in a moment.)

Spells cast in movies must always be a collaboration between star and director. The first shot in Mr. Petzold’s new film offers a prime example. He holds the camera close on Ms. Beer’s face as Undine thinks about something with great concern. Or maybe she’s listening to something intently, except that we hear nothing but traffic noise in the distance. No answer to the mystery is forthcoming for almost half a minute that’s mesmerizing and dialogue-free. Then the situation clarifies. She’s at an outdoor café table with the man she loves, Johannes ( Jacob Matschenz ), and he’s in the fitful process of explaining why he’s going to leave her. Undine makes herself abundantly clear a moment later when she says, with eerie calm, “If you leave me I’ll have to kill you. You know that.” She is playing out another part of the myth—not a bad start for any movie, and a fine way to open this one. (Mr. Petzold’s longtime collaborator Hans Fromm did the luminous cinematography.)

Some of the film’s fascinations, and considerable frustrations, turn on who knows what about the tale that inspired it. Does Johannes know that he’s a goner, according to mythic rules? No reason why he should. A similar question applies to Mr. Rogowski’s Christoph, an industrial diver who wears an old-fashioned diving suit right out of Jules Verne —plus modern scuba gear—when he plunges into local rivers to repair broken turbines. Does Christoph know why he’s so fatefully drawn to Undine after listening to one of her briskly informative lectures? No, the rules of Mr. Petzold’s screenplay dictate that he can’t comprehend his role in her life. But Undine knows. She knows all too well that she’s supposed to return to the water, since Johannes has been unfaithful, and that she wants desperately to remain human, bathed in Christoph’s love.

So much for the characters in the story. There’s also the question of what the audience is supposed to know in order to enjoy the drama on its own terms. It’s all well and good for those who are conversant with the myth in all its details, but how does Mr. Petzold’s film look to those who are not? I was somewhere in between. I knew the title character possessed mythic resonance, remembered such cultural watersheds as “The Little Mermaid,” “Splash” and “The Shape of Water,” and recalled that Audrey Hepburn had starred on Broadway a long time ago in “Ondine,” a version of the myth written by the French playwright Jean Giraudoux. So I did have a general sense of the heroine threatened by some dark fate. There was also a lot I didn’t understand. We had never seen Undine in her previous aquatic incarnation, so some of her connections with Christoph, the diver, seemed not so much magical as arbitrary, confusing or a bit silly.

Yet my partial knowledge or semi-ignorance brought plenty of bliss. Ms. Beer and Mr. Rogowski were extraordinary in “Transit” and they’re wonderful together here. He’s a formidably physical actor with a lyrical gift. She’s an actress who, as the old saw goes, could hold an audience by reading the phone book, and there’s a lovely moment when Christoph asks Undine to deliver one of her lectures in her bedroom, where they’ve just made love. (She’s enchanting as she recounts how the Berlin Palace became a focal point of the growing city.) At other moments Ms. Beer plays Undine as a stranger in a dry land—not a fish out of water but an exquisite creature in search of her soul. “Undine” isn’t a conventional romance, or a readily accessible one, but open yourself to this special film and you’re liable to be hooked.

Write to Joe Morgenstern at [email protected]