The Princess + the Warrior

Wuppertal, Germany. When Sissi (Potente), a psychiatric nurse, is run over by a tanker on her way to the bank, Bodo (Fürmann), ex-army, saves her life with an improvised tracheotomy - an act she believes will bind them together for ever. Thanks to a blind patient, tracking down her saviour proves easy; what's more difficult is persuading him to join in her obscure plans for their future. He slams the door in her face. His brother explains that Bodo is wedded to the past, still brooding over the day his wife perished in an explosion while he cheated Death sitting on the toilet. Tykwer's imaginative follow-up to Run Lola Run adopts the tone of a more contemplative, emotionally mature work - mostly in vain. Fine performances notwithstanding, this is a contrived-to-oblivion nonsense exercise in pretending that the notion of two outsiders having to save each other's lives before they can share each other's love is something more than deeply sentimental. The film's interest in psychiatry goes no further than the alienation effects afforded by a sterile clinic and the usefulness of its patients, while a lacklustre heist goes not so much wrong as nowhere.