Because of my assignements as a member of FIPRESCI jury and also those for the magazine I write for, I'm always writing and discussing about VPRO Tiger Awards Competition movies. Besides them I actually watched few many others films, especially shorts. But one of the movies I particularly liked in the huge program of the festival, was Jerichow. It was an unespected surprise, because I usually don't love remakes.
After The Postman Always Rings Twice starring Lana Turner in 1946 and the homonymous film by Bob Rafaelson with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange (1981), now Cristian Pretzold gives a new interpretation of the book written by James M. Cain. The German director moves that story to a suburb of East Germany and builds a very intense remake of that classic. The husband now is Turkish, according with the prevalent ethnic minority in Germany, but the strength and passion of the love, that makes his wife Laura cheats him with the unknown Thomas, is practically the same. Dirty feelings and hidden past are the main ingredients of this movie. Laura belongs to his husband Ali, because of a huge debts she has to pay to him, and the only solution for the lovers to run away, is to organize his murder.
No virtuosity, neither stylistic inventions in the shooting. The movements of the camera are very simple and precise, getting along perfectly with the lonely and silent set made by long roads punctuated by few houses hidden in the trees.
The strict screenplay respects the main characteristics of melò that perfectly combine, in the second part of the film, with the thriller, before going back again to melodrama in the crucial scene of the conclusion.
Gaetano Maiorino
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