Yella

Nina Hass in transit

Christian Petzold's Yella, from 2007, is a knotty German thriller that established Petzold as one of the leading directors of this century. Nina Hass plays Yella, a young woman who we soon learn is attempting to leave her marriage. However, the husband, named Ben (Hinnerk Schönemann), refuses to accept this and spends the film stalking, badgering, and abusing Yella. He even drives his car off a bridge rather than drive Yella to the train station. Yella leaves her home town of Wittenberg to accept a job in Hanover, moving from the former East Germany to the more prosperous west. That job turns out to be a mirage, all her crooked boss wants is some slap and tickle. However, she runs into a cocksure business man named Phillip (Devid Striesow) at her hotel's restaurant. Phillip, who susses Yella's accounting skills, invites her to be his number cruncher at a business meeting the next day and a new stage in Yella's life has begun. 

It turns out Phillip is a liaison for a shady financier who loans out money, at exorbitant rates, to capitalists who cannot get bank loans. Yella takes to her new life well and even starts falling for Phillip. However, she eventually grasps that Phillip is stealing from his boss and is heading for a fall. The vision of capitalism is that of the art of the scam, everyone is on the make. Yella concludes with a fatalistic ending that has been previously foretold. Throughout the film, Petzold weaves themes (transit, surveillance) and imagery (especially that of water) that would recur throughout his later work. If you enjoy Yella, I strongly urge you to seek out Petzold's later masterpieces with Nina Hass, Barbara and Phoenix, both of which contain sublime acting and filmmaking.

Spoiler Alert

I cannot fully grapple with Yella without spilling the beans about the ending. Earlier in the film, when Ben drives the car containing he and Yella off a bridge and into a river, both passengers survive the plunge and collapse on the river bank. Somewhat improbably, Yella is able to retrieve her bags and make her train to Hanover. The film continues with her further misadventure until the accident is repeated at the end of the film. This time Yella and Ben are dead, their bodies covered by rescue workers. One interpretation I'll offer is that Petzold is offering us a variation of Ambrose Bierce's An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge in which the narrator imagines an escape and homecoming in the few moments before he dies from a hanging. It would explain the weird migraines and or psychotic breaks Yella experiences, always accompanied by liquid imagery, where she hears a high pitched sound and water rushing.