Yella

You go back, Jack, do it again.

2007

Review: May 31, 2008

Director: Christian Petzold

Starring: Nina Hoss, Devid Striesow, Hinnerk Schönemann

You might die of boredom.

THE SETUP:

Woman has a car accident, is stalked, and happens into a rather interesting new job.

DISCUSSION:

So I have plans to have dinner and a movie with my friend, only—nothing we want to see. It’s looking like we’re facing Harold and Kumar II when he remembers Yella, this intriguing-sounding German film that is based on an earlier movie that I was familiar with. I can’t tell you what that movie is yet, because it would ruin this movie for you, but I will say that knowing the earlier film, and thus having a good idea what was happening here, kept me interested far longer than the others in our theater, who were sighing, snoozing, and walking out. And this thing is only 90 minutes long.

We begin with our heroine Yella getting off a train in her hometown. She is followed by her ex-husband Ben, who tries to make small talk while Yella walks silently on, clutching her pepper spray. She arrives at her father’s house, and tells him about this fancy new job she has. He tries to offer her a wad of cash, but she says no, she’s going to be well-paid.

When the cab arrives to take her to the train station—what do ya know, it’s actually Ben offering her a ride. Ladies and Gentleman, if you’ve ever seen Open Your Eyes or its American remake Vanilla Sky, you will know that you do NOT want to get into cars with obviously deranged exes. Ben accuses Yella of abandoning him when his business went under, heading off to a cushy job and leaving him to starve. There’s this whole bit about computer equipment he paid $80,000 for that is now, one year later, only worth $2,000. Then he drives off a bridge! Like I said, don’t get into cars with deranged exes.

Yella drags herself to shore, as does Ben. She gets up, gets on that train, and heads off to her new job. When she gets there she finds that her cards don’t work—but her dad slipped his roll of cash into her pocket. When she arrives for work, people are carrying out computer equipment, and she soon discovers that the place has just been shut down. So she’s screwed.

She meets this other fellow, Phillip, who bears a rather strong resemblance to Ben. He asks her to accompany him to a meeting, where her job is simply to sit looking from the opposite party to her laptop, in order to intimidate them. She has a weird freak-out where she breaks a glass, then suddenly can only hear noises of water and crows—like at her crash—but then snaps back and proves that she actually does understand the banking sheets she’s looking at. She deduces that the company opposite bought used computer equipment for $2,000, but has them listed as costing $80,000. Do those numbers look familiar?

SPOILERS > > >
So Yella and Phillip go into business together, her job being simply to sit there and help intimidate the other side. Meanwhile, it seems that Ben is still alive and stalking her. She also continues to have strange reveries. Soon she becomes romantically involved with Phillip, who deduces that Ben accused her of abandoning him when the money ran out, and tells her that this is just something Ben tried to put in her head to make her feel bad.

Eventually things go bad for Phillip. He is just $200,000 short of the money he needs to finance this sure-fire scheme, which he invited Yella to join him in. Now that the money is gone, he advises her to move on without him. She goes to one of the potential investors, and blackmails him into financing his wife’s house in order to come up with the money for Phillip’s scheme.

By this time, one of the three guys sitting in front of me, who tended to giggle at every tiny little thing, now breathed in and let out a heavy sigh. He and another friend had obviously been dragged there by their third friend, who seemed generally more serious and interested in the movie. The guy seated behind us had already given up and left. My friend next to me was nodding as he drifted in and out of sleep.

When the big meeting comes, the investor is not there. Yella has a vision of him standing in the doorway, all wet. He also bears a strong resemblance to her father. She runs to his house and she and his wife discover he has drowned himself.

OKAY, SERIOUS, END-OF-MOVIE SPOILERS NOW > > >
Then Yella wakes back in Ben’s car just before the accident. They go off and they both die. The end!

The earlier movie this is based on is Carnival of Souls. In that movie the heroine goes off a bridge at the beginning, crawls out, has a bunch of spooky visions while trying to begin a new life, and eventually realizes that she’s been dead the whole time. Here it seems that this is all a dream that happened seconds before Yella’s death. Like I said, knowing what was coming at the end made the entire thing more interesting for me, which is probably why I didn’t just give up and fall asleep or want to leave like everyone else.

The question is then: why did Yella dream THIS story, based on what we know about her? It was a bit opaque at first, but I think I have it: She has a fantasy in which she is able to re-do her relationship with her husband, with a man who looks almost exactly like him. He allays her guilt that she left Ben when his finances went South, and through the story she is able to swoop in and, even when told to abandon the financially-insolvent man, she stays with him and in fact saves him. So she gets to do it all again, and bring it to a conclusion that sits better with her psyche. Interestingly, in doing so, she drives another husband to death by drowning due to having his business ruined—which may be the discordant element that causes her to wake up.
< < < SPOILERS END

However, it seems that it was largely too opaque for those who didn’t have a clue where it was going, and after a while they just gave up. Almost no one in the theater seemed entirely satisfied. I generally liked it, but even so I could have skipped it entirely without really feeling like anything was missing from my life. It’s ultimately just kind of an intriguing curiosity.

SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?

If you like… no one in my theater seemed to like it very much, and one guy walked out.