It is easy to situate Christian Petzold’s film Undine (2021) within what David Bordwell called “art-cinema narration,” in contrast with the so-called “classical cinema” of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. In Undine—a film premiered and awarded at the Berlin Film Festival and the European Film Awards—we find several aspects Bordwell identifies (such as allusions to unknown worlds, non-linear storytelling, an existence emptied of meaning, scenes of pure contemplation) while it narrates the story of a young woman who interrelates a “real” world with another whose laws are not intelligible to viewers, that is, a world tied to myth. We already know the Greco-Germanic myth of Ondine: a beautiful and immortal nymph who, after falling in love with a young nobleman, renounces those qualities and is condemned to love him forever. Upon discovering his infidelity, Ondine sentences him to death and is transformed into a nymph inhabiting the waters of a river in which her reflection can be seen on stormy days.

In Petzold’s film, the adaptation of that myth is narrated through a love story. Undine is a young Berlin historian who works in the Urban Development and Housing sector, giving talks on the architectural history of the city she lives in, covering periods such as the Second World War, the postwar era (the Cold War), and the later unification of East and West Germany after the fall of the Wall.