La donna dello scrittore

What a lousy, clueless and messy movie. If this was adapted faithfully from a novel, then I'd say that novel also sucks big time! The movie was lazily trying to prescribe a chaos when the German Nazi had invaded the France in WWII, but didn't bother to change everything to look alike the 1940s. The lousy director decided just to use the current French localities such as Paris and Marseille to shoot this movie, so all the things showed in it were uptodate current, vehicles were all present models, cities were full of illegal immigrants from Africa, all the police forces were geared in modern weaponry. The worst and the weirdest thing of this movie was the ridiculous mix up of the languages, the narrative was in German, the characters who played those desperate German Jews fled to France, and all the consulars of the foreign nations, all speaking German, but sometimes, French was suddenly the major dialog.

If this movie was adapted from the specific novel, I don't think the author was in a very stable mental condition. What she tried to deliver was nothing but chaotic mixed-ups, then complete further messed up by the brainless screenplay writers and the moronic director.

The movie was a complete MESS! Some of the reviewers tried to show they were deeper and more intelligent than the other viewers, so they completely understood what's going on in this poorly scripted and brainlessly directed movie, but actually this movie got nothing to do with anything at all. A movie so lazily made without any endeavor, not even in the least to try as the TV series, "The Man in the High Castle", was such a shameless and shameful poor product by the German movie industries. A movie so shamelessly tried to fool the viewers with some stupid modern day "Existentialism" touch was just disgusting!

Being original in the medium of film, when coupled with a fresh perspective for commonly repeated stories and themes, can lead to memorable performances with unique and refreshing interpretations, as seen here (although it seldom works with Shakespeare unless you modernise the dialogue). A 1940s passage is reimagined today within the bounds of those trying to escape conflict at a French port through any means they can establish, with the ever present threat of the authorities constantly and aggressively trying to prevent them. While the times may have changed and their reasons for escape evolved, this dilemma still remains in the real world today for some, to migrate at haste to survive.

Highly recommended. Imaginative setting, letters of transit, Occupied France, unrequited love, maybe a bit slow, making it seem a bit long at times, and an enigmatic ending, of course. The German actor a doppelgänger of Joaquin Phoenix. A sometimes intense, always intelligent, certainly worthwhile 'art' film set in Paris, Marseilles and your imagination. We all have waited in a bar, a glass of wine in front of us, waiting for a woman we love.

What I liked: the intertwined and unexpected developments of this love triangle (or square?) of WW2 refugees in Marseille... ingeniously "teleported" in the current days. What I didn't like: the somehow uncertain adaptation to a story of seemingly current events...

German Director Christian Petzold's latest, TRANSIT, follows in the line of his excellent movies PHOENIX and BARBARA as another exploration of individual identity during periods of high political tensions. Based on a WWII novel, Petzold made the conscious decision to not be another period piece by setting in the present. Or, did he? The world we find in TRANSIT is like a parallel alternate reality. All shot in present day France. No visual effects. But, there is something off. Most of the clothes and props the main characters wear and use seem to come from the 1940s. Europe has been plunged into some unspecified war. Refugees are being expelled. Others desperate to emigrate legally to the Americas. Transit visas are like gold. Georg (Franz Rogowski) is a German stuck in Marseilles. By chance he acquires a Transit visa from another man, but, this requires him to take on the other man's identity. A mysterious woman, Marie (Paula Beer, recently seen in the exceptional NEVER LOOK AWAY) seems to keep appearing before him. Always elusive. Eventually, they meet, only to make things more complicated. Petzold is after something very tricky here. Without ever fully explaining the world he is building, we are plunged into it often leaving the viewer as baffled as the characters. The parallels to the refugee crisis in present day Europe are obvious (Georg interacts with an African woman and her child, and later, with a Muslim family), but never hammered home. Stylistically, Petzold has created an odd blend between a Noirish CASABLANCA and a totalitarian Orwellian 1984 present, all by way of Antonioni's THE PASSENGER. The past and present fold in and out, like something out of Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. TRANSIT is a heady mix that won't be for all tastes, and Petzold doesn't fully command this world as well as he has in his past features. Still, it's a movie that's hard to shake. The acting is quite strong including the two leads, and a particularly strong supporting bit by Barbara Auer. TRANSIT may not be to the level of Petzold's previous few pictures, but, it's a worthy entry that lingers in the mind.