Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss (1982)

Third viewing; first: August 30, 1987; second: November 26, 2004.

English distribution title: Veronika Voss.
Aproximate translation of the German title: The Longing of Veronika Voss.

In 1955, a sports journalist meets a woman in a park. She is Veronika Voss, a former movie star who is now reduced to drug addiction and dreams of her brief past fame. She and the journalist engage in a relationship during which he uncovers an odious criminal racket.

This is very dark in atmosphere and theme, and attractive enough. The marvelous performances by Rosel Zech and Annemarie Düringer are what mainly gives it distinction. The film's style is semi-parodic melodrama, and could never be mistaken with an earnest specimen of the genre; self-consciousness and self-reference are all-important features here, as testifies the film-within-the film sequence in the beginning, in which, as in a game of mirrors, Veronika watches the prophetic film version of her life. Motion pictures and their power to anaesthesize human pain are a hidden counter-theme.

Rating: 66 (unchanged)