Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:  
Summary: Enigmatic Film
Comment: "Yella" is definitely one of the better foreign language films that I have seen recently. The acting is particularly impressive, especially Nina Hoss's performance as Yella Fichte , a young German woman, just separated from her husband and moving to Hanover in search of a new career and a new start.Yella is icily attractive and intelligent and she gains employment working as an assistant for a well off financier.However her husband persists in stalking her as her attraction to her new employer grows. It would be inappropriate to label this gripping film a thriller; it is more of a film about relationships and avarice than anything else. The ending when it arrives is quite surprising -I didn't see it coming at all- and in my opinion wasn't the best of conclusions to an absorbing film.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Very interesting film!
Comment: Nina Hoss is Yella, a young Eastgerman woman who wants to leave both, her poor hometown and her husband. So she moves to Westgermany, starts to work for a private equity manager and begins a relationship with him. However, her husband keeps stalking her...
The story is about a woman's dream which gets out of control. It shows how an Eastgerman woman tries to cope with Westgerman reality. It is filmed in a cold and at the same time realistic, artistic and suspenseful way (reminded me a bit of Chabrol's films). The major characters are multifaceted and there motives cannot be easily pinned down. The acting is excellent (Nina Hoss won a Silver Bear on the Berlin Film Festival for her performance) and leaves room for interpretation. This film stands in the tradition of German 'author cinema'. It is not easy, mainstream entertainment, but if you are looking for something unusual and thought-provoking, this is your film. I certainly enjoyed it a lot.
The acting is supreme (Nina Hoss won a Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival for her portrayal of Yella). The story really captivated me.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Yawnsome Disappointment
Comment: This film could have been so much better, had it not been simplistic, trite, with an unbelievably bad ending and above all - rather dull, although that latter quality wasn't too bad as I was feeling a bit meditative at the time. While the film could be deemed symbolic of many things, so could an advert for baked beans, and I felt this film wasn't clever or powerful enough to be construed as making a statement or specific portrayal about anything significant. Furthermore it is neither nightmarish nor particularly compelling, and its grip is weak, its unsettled nature mild. Nina Hoss is pretty cool throughout, and although intriguing more for what isn't in the film, her performance - described as enigmatic - is pedestrian: the only thing enigmatic is why this film was made in the first place.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not just a suspense thriller
Comment: Yella is a nightmarish portrayal of the alienating impact on society of business practices in the new world economy, showing it in such a harshly realistic light that it becomes almost surreal. The much criticised suspense element is certainly predictable, and signalled well in advance, but there is much more to this film than its conventional and readable twist. What is important is how the technique is used to put a very eerie and unsettling perspective on modern-day Germany and the world of international business affairs.
There's nothing naturalistic about that approach, but then there is nothing human about the world the director is depicting. Through repetitive motifs, unchanging camera placements and a limited number of situations that eventually start to collapse into themselves, Petzold creates a terrifying sense of unease and a distinct hint of death in this closed-off business world that merely runs mechanically through a series of familiar routines. Not naturalistic maybe, but frighteningly realistic all the same - its nightmare world only one step removed from the real one.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Yella: pity about the misleading reviews
Comment: Just a few words on what has been reviewed by a number of prominent reviewers and respected publications very favorably, which quite honestly left me gobsmacked. This film very much resembles a very bad tv movie from 1970's east germany and before you ask, yeah I've seen a few. I can forgive low budget limitations and mediocre actors (within reason) but not predictable, repetitive, plot devices and a sub par script attempting to imitate David Lynch. It may be that those reviewing this film also don't have a grasp of German which I think may alter one's perception somewhat, though that would be one hell of a leap, but understanding the German underlines the short falls even more so in both the plot and the direction. So don't believe the hype this film promises so much and then delivers it very badly.
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![Yella [2007]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51cb6IgGnaL._SL160_.jpg)
