German Crime Trilogy, Dreileben, Captivates at 49th New York Film Festival

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Reviews

Published on Tuesday, 07 August 2012 02:54

Written by Jack Angstreich

The 49th New York Film Festival presents a trilogy of feature-length German films set in the vicinity of a small Thuringian town and linked together by the search for an escaped convict hiding out in the area. The potential in such a project is here diminished by the decision to assign each of the features to a different director, preventing the emergence of a unified vision across the series. However, the films, unified as Dreileben, succeed in being stand-alone single features, if less resonantly so.

The first work in the trilogy is also the strongest, Beats Being Dead by Christian Petzold, who had directed the outstanding Jerichow, which also was recently given its New York premiere by the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

The story is a sad and moving one, exploring the romance between an ambitious young nurse, who works at the hospital from which the convict escapes, and a Slavic immigrant maid at the hotel where the criminal briefly takes refuge.Shot and screened in a high quality digital format, Beats Being Dead has the most rigorously accomplished visual style in the series, as well as the greatest degree of self-sufficiency as a stand-alone feature; Petzold and his director of photography display a considerable understanding of the limitations governing how to shoot in high-definition video.

The second work, Don't Follow Me Around by Dominik Graf, which looks to have been shot in a different, "grainier" format, is less satisfying and less controlled as a whole, but nonetheless absorbing. It centers on a psychologist who is employed in aiding the police to catch the convict, and her relations with an old girlfriend and her husband, with whom she is temporarily staying as the case unfolds.

The final feature, One Minute of Darkness by Christoph Hochhäusler, which looks to have been shot in the same format as Beats Being Dead, has the closest relation to generic structures, cross-cutting between the escapee and a tenacious detective pursuing the case. This film too manages to be gripping and proceeds to an effectively chilling, mournful conclusion.

Dreileben Trilogy
49th New York Film Festival

Walter Reade Theatre
165 West 65th Street
New York, NY  10023

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