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The Princess And The Warrior

The Bozeman Film Festival's newest offering, "The Princess and the Warrior," is far from the perfect film.

Directed by Tom Tykwer, best known for the fast-paced and hip "Run Lola Run," "Princess" shares the same desire to illustrate time and relationships across many different perspectives. It does so at a slower and more deliberate pace than the ode to kinetic energy that was "Lola," but in some places "The Princess and the Warrior" flounders.

Towards the end, the reckless use of coincidence and the portrayal of the thin duality of good and evil, love and hate, life and death becomes pretentious and overbearing where it once was eloquent. The film runs more than a hair too long. It is not a perfect movie.

However, Tykwer will someday make a truly great film, and the proof of this is in one particular scene a third of the way into "The Princess and the Warrior." It is simple, powerful, beautiful, and horrible, and if nothing else, this film could be watched for this one scene.

Franka Potente, who played Lola, stars as Sissi, a nurse in a psychiatric hospital. She is loved by her patients, but has nothing to turn to outside of work. Co-starring is Benno Furmann as Bodo, a bank robber and victim of coincidence.

The compelling scene in question is when the two meet. Bodo, fleeing from a robbery, unwittingly causes an accident in which Sissi becomes pinned under a truck, choking to death on her own blood. To elude the police, Bodo ducks under the truck, sees Sissi, and inexplicably saves her life. To say how he does this is to say too much about the nature of the film, but it is both terrifying in the details and comforting in its intimacy.

Tykwer does not allow the audience to escape the scene; they are just as pinned as Sissi. The masterful use of the soundtrack gives the viewer no respite, no ability to block out what is happening. We hear, very clearly, every labored and dripping breath that Sissi takes, knowing as well as she does, that it might be her last.

Potente is very skilled in this aspect of her craft. Her eyes are blank and passionless, gripped by death; yet we know everything she knows, and nothing she does not.

The film continues. Sissi is rushed to the hospital, clinging to Bodo's hand. When she wakes up, he is not there, and she knows she must find him. It is her destiny to do so, not in a smarmy 1950's sense, but simply because it is so. Bodo, oblivious, plans another bank robbery.

The relationship between Sissi and Bodo grows and peaks as the film explores the interconnected aspects of their lives.

The faults of this film are easily overwhelmed by its ambition, key scenes, and the depth that Tykwer allows the film to delve into the very heart and soul of his characters.