Leslie Felperin 

The Police Officer’s Wife review – study in suffering or irritating mess?

The German director's previous film would convert Richard Dawkins to religion, but using the same techniques in a fictional tale makes this a trying watch, writes Leslie Felperin
  
  

The Police Officer's Wife film still
Just doesn't work … The Police Officer's Wife Photograph: pr

German director Philip Gröning's last film, Into Great Silence, was a wonder, a nearly three-hour documentary about a French monastery so spiritual and rapturous in its beauty it could convert Richard Dawkins. For his latest film, The Police Officer's Wife, a fiction feature about an abusive relationship in suburban Germany, he's revived some of the same techniques – deep-breath pacing, fragmentary editing, exquisite painterly cinematography – and yet it just doesn't work. The use of chapter headings before and after each scene, no matter how inconsequential, must add a pointless 15 extra minutes to the running time, and serve as only to add a layer of arthouse ponderousness that's ultimately infuriating. Alexandra Finder as Christine, the beaten-down wife, gives a powerful, refined performance, but her character is too much of a cipher, and one starts to lose sympathy when she fails again and again to get herself and her adorable young child (played by twins Pia and Chiara Kleemann) the hell out of there. Maybe creating a study in suffering is the point.

 

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