West

Writer/director Christian Schwochow does a decent job of adapting Julia Franck's semi-autobiographical novel by earnestly striving to compare the plight of East Germans crossing the Berlin Wall with that of post-millennial economic migrants. Both follow single mother Nelly (Jördis Triebel), who in 1978 pays to be smuggled across the West German border with her nine-year-old son so she can escape Stasi surveillance after the death of her Russian scientist partner in a car crash. But her true identity is quickly discovered at the Marienfelde Refugee Centre, where Nelly is torn between trusting a longtime inmate or the interrogator who's convinced that her partner is a spy now living in Moscow. Despite conveying a sense of Cold War paranoia and dread, this is a rather routine melodrama that lacks the intrigue and control of similarly themed pictures such as Christian Petzold's Barbara (2012). Triebel works hard to suggest the strain involved in attaining the crucial 12 stamps on her documentation. But, for all the claustrophobic acuity of Tim Pannen's production design and the disorientating effect of Frank Lamm's kinetic camerawork, this fails to generate sufficient empathy or suspense.