Film

From its unsettling opening, in which a woman gets off a train and has to deal with her heartbroken but vaguely menacing ex following her down the street, Yella puts you on edge as you wait for the tension to break. It isn’t the conventional tension of a thriller; Petzold doesn’t allow us to invest enough in the title character (Hoss) for that. She herself is an enigma, and trying to figure out just what she’s up to is part of the fun.

We say fun, and for a while, Petzold’s little game is indeed entertaining. Yella’s ex (Schönemann) has a spectacular meltdown within the first ten minutes, and Yella escapes to a new life in another city, where she ends up helping an investment banker negotiate buyout deals that seem a bit shady. Suddenly we’ve gone from Fatal Attraction in reverse to House of Games. Then things start getting odd.

You’re likely to work out Petzold’s game long before he wants you to, leaving you with nothing to do but point to the clues confirming what is going on here. Does our description seem a bit coy and precious? Well, by the end, so does the film.