The cast is impressive, but the movie feels lifeless. What I enjoyed the most were the passages from the book the script is based on. Marlen Haushofer speaks in a unique, otherworldly voice that doesn't travel well from page to screen: "Of course I could think of the future, but I never do. The future will come regardless, and it will turn us into the people we never wanted to be." There is one great scene though. Stella, dressed in a silver ball gown, walks down a narrow flight of stairs. The walls on either side of the stairs are covered in dark red fabric. You can decode it as a birth canal or as the road to hell. After a few seconds, Stella disappears into the darkness at the bottom of the stairs. The scene has a dream-like quality and captures the spirit of the story in a few seconds. In contrast, almost all the other scenes felt stilted and anemic. Perhaps this is the way the director wanted it, but it didn't work for me.
