Yella 2007

Christian Petzold (Something to Remind Me, Wolfsburg) is a master of ice-cold 21st-century paranoia.

"Yella might be pigeonholed as a chilly European drama, but it‘s also distinctively uncanny. Its accountant heroine, fleeing a nasty encounter with her ex-husband, teams up with a bullish speculator who enlists her help in playing psychological games at business meetings. Stranded in a claustrophobic nowhere-zone of business parks and autobahn hotels, the couple bond over spreadsheets. But behind these sleekly soulless manoeuvres, something creepily metaphysical is stirring. Yella plays like a German take on Antonioni, infused with the taciturn toughness of a David Mamet con-game story - but ultimately it‘s far weirder. Its star Nina Hoss is charismatically scary, in turns icy, simmering and glassily inscrutable." — Jonathan Romney, The Independent