Set in Berlin, 1810, the movie tells the story of Heinrich von Kleist, a despondent young poet/dramatist, and his lover Henriette Vogel, the wife of a business acquaintance, in the final stages of their lives.
The Austrian director's sixth film is ecstatically original: a work of film-history-philosophy with a digital-cinema palette of acutely crafted compositions.
It can be a strategically off-putting movie yet one that also steals under your skin scene by scene and through Ms. Schnoeink's slowly revealing performance as an ill-fated heroine turned future biographical footnote.
