Why I love Nina Hoss’ per­for­mance in Phoenix

When think­ing of icon­ic direc­tor-actor pair­ings, our minds tend to con­jure up the likes of John Cas­savetes and Gena Row­lands, Sofia Cop­po­la and Kirsten Dun­st, Ing­mar Bergman and Liv Ull­mann, and Paul Thomas Ander­son and Daniel Day-Lewis. One that is not as often brought up in these dis­cus­sions, despite being high­ly wor­thy, is the mas­ter­ful duo of Ger­man film­mak­er Chris­t­ian Pet­zold and actor Nina Hoss, whose cre­ative rela­tion­ship dates back to 2001 and so far con­sists of six collaborations.

The most recent of their cin­e­mat­ic offer­ings is Phoenix, an atmos­pher­ic melo­dra­ma with noir under­tones released in 2014. Loose­ly based on Hubert Monteilhet’s 1961 French nov­el Le retour des cen­dres and co-writ­ten by the late Harun Faroc­ki, Phoenix serves as the sec­ond install­ment of what Pet­zold has labeled his ​‘Love in Times of Oppres­sive Sys­tems’ tril­o­gy, which also encom­pass­es 2012’s Bar­bara and 2018’s Tran­sit. Set in the imme­di­ate after­math of World War II, Germany’s recon­struc­tion looms large­ly in the back­ground of this deeply com­pelling char­ac­ter study, but more than any­thing, Phoenix is a cul­mi­na­tion of the pair’s work togeth­er and a show­case for Hoss’ beguil­ing pres­ence as a per­former who under­stands how to express a character’s feel­ings while work­ing with­in Petzold’s min­i­mal­ist style.

The film opens with Nel­ly Lenz and her friend, Lene (Nina Kun­zen­dorf), as they pass through an Amer­i­can check­point at the Swiss-Ger­man bor­der at night. Nelly’s face is masked behind bloody ban­dages as she sits hunched over in the pas­sen­ger seat. A con­cen­tra­tion camp sur­vivor, Nel­ly has become dis­fig­ured after suf­fer­ing a bul­let wound to the head and must under­go facial recon­struc­tion surgery, though recre­ation would be a more fit­ting word. She wants to look the same as she did before, but the doc­tor warns her that it won’t be pos­si­ble and ren­ders a vis­age that bears only a vague like­ness. Still pre­sum­ably dead to many, she is a ghost who, in her own words, ​“no longer exist[s].”

With a brand new face and no liv­ing fam­i­ly left, Nel­ly has lost her entire iden­ti­ty and sense of self, now mere­ly a shell of a human. In an ear­ly scene, Nel­ly catch­es a glimpse of her face, which is still bruised and heal­ing, for the first time since remov­ing the ban­dages. Look­ing into a shard of mir­ror at the site where her for­mer home once stood, it appears frag­ment­ed and unrec­og­niz­able. Hoss effec­tive­ly com­mu­ni­cates the hor­ror and shock of what she has just seen, and the inter­nal tur­moil of com­ing to the real­iza­tion that she must live with it for the rest of her life.

Fuel­ing Nelly’s will to sur­vive is the hope of reunit­ing with her hus­band, John­ny (Ronald Zehrfeld), despite Lene’s warn­ings that he was the one who gave Nel­ly up to the Nazis, and that she should leave Ger­many behind to set­tle in Pales­tine. She wan­ders Berlin’s streets of rub­ble day and night in search of him, and when she final­ly finds John­ny, he is bus­ing tables at the Phoenix night­club in which they used to per­form – she was a singer, he was a pianist. He doesn’t rec­og­nize Nel­ly, and she intro­duces her­self as Esther. John­ny, who believes his wife died dur­ing the Holo­caust, is struck by a slight resem­blance in ​‘Esther’ that makes him think she can help him scheme to gain access to Nelly’s fam­i­ly inher­i­tance, which they would split. Nel­ly goes along with the plan, hold­ing back on telling him the truth in order to fig­ure out if he betrayed her, and – ulti­mate­ly – because he is the only thing remain­ing con­nect­ed to her past life.

John­ny thus coach­es Esther/​Nelly to be her old self by teach­ing her to imi­tate her own hand­writ­ing and gait. He buys her a red dress from Paris and gives her a pair of her own old shoes, remak­ing her in his own image rather than choos­ing to become aware of the harsh real­i­ties that would force him to con­front the role he played in Nelly’s arrest.

Yearn­ing to return to her old life, Nel­ly is plagued with denial as she refus­es to let go of the belief that her one true love had noth­ing to do with her incar­cer­a­tion. She des­per­ate­ly wants to be remem­bered, and more impor­tant­ly for John­ny to see her for who she tru­ly is. Hoss’ intense and expres­sive face trans­lates every glim­mer of desire and hope as she must sim­ply exist while wait­ing for John­ny to rec­og­nize her. It’s a tes­ta­ment to her restraint that we believe this com­pli­cat­ed and seem­ing­ly implau­si­ble tale to be realistic.

Hoss has one of the most spell­bind­ing faces in cin­e­ma, evok­ing the ethe­re­al stars of the old Hol­ly­wood era. It car­ries the abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate every­thing that Nel­ly can­not bring her­self to ver­bal­ly artic­u­late in a film that is full of deaf­en­ing silences, shift­ing from sor­row to vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to resent­ment with­in the blink of an eye. Hoss has a ghost­ly pres­ence that con­veys the emo­tion­al weight appar­ent in every step of Nelly’s trans­for­ma­tion­al and heal­ing jour­ney. In what essen­tial­ly treads the line of a meta role as Nel­ly becomes her own dop­pel­gänger, Hoss brings a sub­tle yet affect­ing phys­i­cal­i­ty as she swift­ly maneu­vers between these two dif­fer­ent ver­sions of herself.

In the final moments, Nel­ly sings ​‘Speak Low,’ the melan­cholic 1943 bal­lad by Kurt Weill and Ogden Nash, which plays sev­er­al times through­out Phoenix, to the point where it haunts the film just as much as its char­ac­ters do. Per­form­ing in a restau­rant for friends from their for­mer life with John­ny accom­pa­ny­ing on the piano, Nel­ly releas­es the pain and emo­tion that has been inter­nal­ized for so long while final­ly con­fronting the truth. It is here that Hoss unleash­es her aston­ish­ing tal­ent; it is beau­ti­ful, pow­er­ful, and heart-shat­ter­ing in equal mea­sure to watch Nel­ly reclaim con­trol of her­self and her own voice. Like a phoenix ris­ing from the ash­es, she has expe­ri­enced her own rebirth.