Business as unusual: Yella’s Nina Hoss

To make a long story short, the work of the so-called “Berlin School” directors has proven polarizing in their native Germany — perhaps because of their knack for making short stories long: many of the keynote titles of the New(er) German Cinema are rather slender in terms of narrative. Their fascination lies elsewhere — in an emphasis on character over plot that suggests the influence of modernist literature, and in precise craftsmanship that yields variably stylized (and often deeply critical) depictions of contemporary German life.

Social commentary animates Christian Petzold’s Yella (***; Feb. 27, 9pm), which attempts to link an encroaching sense of spiritual malaise to a bottom-line corporate ethos. Nina Hoss stars as the title character, an East German accountant who goes West in the aftermath of a shocking accident, only to become embroiled in quietly brutal boardroom intrigue. Her trajectory surely carries a political undercurrent, but it’s subtle. The same can’t be said for the film’s other major structuring device, an Ambrose Bierce–inspired bit of misdirection that indicates Petzold’s genre-bending ambitions exceed his ability to realize them. (This disparity is less pronounced in his subsequent, critically acclaimed rural noir Jerichow, which will be getting a proper release later this spring).

If Petzold’s work can perhaps be accused of austere showboating in the Michael Haneke mould, the films of his countrywoman Maria Speth are harder to peg. Speth’s student debut The Days Between (***; March 6, 8:45pm) was content to drift in a vaguely Asian-inflected haze of urban anomie — an agreeable visual proposition that belied a lack of strong characterizations. Those charges wouldn’t stick with Madonnas (****; March 14, 8:45pm), which foregrounds one of the most challenging figures in recent cinema: Rita (Sandra Hüller), a sullen, obstinate post-teen whose apparent addiction to procreation — it’s gradually revealed that she has at least five children, all by different fathers — is matched only by her spectacular lack of maternal instinct. The scene where she arm wrestles with her brood reveals not parental affection but a defiant, controlling mania; Speth’s observational style doesn’t invite empathy so much as stunned contemplation of a woman whose solipsism is all-consuming.

Bracingly unpleasant and widely derided, Madonnas is likely the film maudit of the Berlin School, but it’s not its masterpiece. That distinction is reserved for Maren Ade’s The Forest For the Trees (*****; March 1, 5:15pm), which details the vampiric attachment of mousy, recently relocated schoolteacher Melanie (Eva Löbau) to her fashionista neighbour (Daniela Holz). In addition to being one of the most incisive movies ever made about the trip-hammer tension of some female friendships, The Forest For the Trees is singularly credible in its presentation of emotional breakdown.

A lot has been written about the film’s ending, and rightly so: arty transcendence-mongers like Gus Van Sant could learn something from its ecstatic simplicity. But Ade’s exhilarating conclusion wouldn’t work if her star weren’t so cringe-inducingly good at essaying the various stages of hitting bottom. In a constellation of films marked by searching female protagonists, Melanie is the one who most earns her moment of (self) discovery.