In 2017, a film about the relationship between a young woman and
an older, successful artist landed on many critic's top ten lists
and snagged 100+ award nominations. It was a sign of the steep
decline in our cinematic culture that the film wasn't Volker
Schlondorff's _Return to Montauk_.

_Return_ is an unauthorized "sequel" to the late Swiss writer
Max Frisch's semi-autobiographical _Montauk_, which re-imagines
celebrated European writer Max's affair with his much younger
publicist Lynn during his book tour in New York in the 70s.
Max's former benefactor Walter plays a large role in the book,
which is haunted by Max's memories. The film transposes
this previous episode to the 90s, just after the Berlin Wall
came down. The "present day" happens 18 years later, Walter
and his Paul Klees and Corots are relocated to Manhattan, "Lynn"
has grown into corporate lawyer Rebecca, while the present day publicist/accolyte-hapless-lover roles are split between
Lindsey (a wry Isi Laborde-Edozien) and Clara (Susanne Wolff).

I have never liked Stellan Skarsgard's glowering Hollywood
villains, but here he plays the aging Max like he is an eager
teenager. Dreamy and vulnerable, he endears when he is with
the ladies, although in public he practises a shop-worn literary
celebrity persona with tired punchlines. Back in Manhattan
after many years he searches for Rebecca, whom he once abandoned
for another. Nina Hoss' delayed entrance as his elusive
object of yearning, impossibly trim and glamorous in the lobby
of a corporate glass palace, is truly worth the wait. Hoss is
the Jeanne Moreau of our age, the undisguised lines on her face
only accentuating her imperiousness. A drunk Max finds this
out himself when he crashes her house one night and is sent
packing. But she invites him to drive to see her prospective
new house on Long Island, and contrives to spend the night in a
Montauk hotel where they once stayed. There, on the white sand,
a stone's throw from the iconic light house, Hoss delivers a
powerhouse monologue that shatters his hope of a long-term reunion.

It is an absolutely electrifying performance, one can that recalls
Nastassja Kinski's in _Paris, Texas_. As she jumps from wistful
half-smiles to resignation to sadness, all within a matter of
seconds, Hoss's gestures become so tender and lifelike -- utterly
unpredictable yet jolt you with the shock of recognition. She
has a way of averting her gaze, or cradling her boot on the bench,
that tells you every word comes from deep within her, is drawn from
heart-felt experience. Indeed her mannerisms remind me of a Slovenia
woman I once knew, who has passed away... Nina Hoss has played so
many sphinx-like ciphers in one-note movies directed by the overrated
Christian Petzold, one almost forgets how good she can be.

In fact, all the actors are extraordinary and unforgettable: Niels
Arestrup as the capricious and sexist Walter, Susaane Wolff as
sweet and fun-loving Rebecca 5.0 -- a put-upon German interning at
American publishing houses (the actress is actually two years older
than Hoss but acts young); the Irish singer Bronagh Gallagher as
Rebecca's best friend; and Isi-Laborde-Edozien as the African
American publicist who would have been Max's next fling if he had
not run into Rebecca.

Manhattan is perhaps the star supporting player; we are treated
to the city from its most glamorous to its most grim. There are the
Public Library and Lincoln Center on the Upper West Side, Rebecca's
modernist penthouse on Irving Place (I must visit that street next
time in NY!), and Walter's baroque Art-Deco palace. And then there
are Lindsey's $1500-a-month dump in Chinatown and Clara's even
dirtier live-in closet on the Lower East Side, above a Kebab eatery. (Schlondorff really knows his New York!) Max stays at the Algonquin
Hotel, home to Dorthy Parker, even though he is broke; he is above
it all, glides along in taxis and airplanes, globetrots from city
to city giving speeches, chasing dreams and women interchangeable
to him. He calls himself an animal, not a tree. In contrast, the
ladies who work and pine for him have put down roots both physical
and emotion; they love him deeply and steadfastly, and they do not
forget a thing about him. At the end of the film, Max finally
understands what he has done to them. In a moment of self-recognition
even rarer in cinema, he realizes he will never change.

The black-and-white opening credits are accompanied by the dins
of an airport. The film ends at JFK, where Clara kisses Max
goodbye. Those of us keeping scores, and keeping the faith through
years of travesty that has passed for "art-house cinema," remember
that Schlondorff's _Homo Faber_ also begins and ends in airports.
_Homo Faber_ was his first adaptation of Max Frisch's novels; he
showed the Swiss writer a rough cut before the latter's death, and
Frisch "loved it." That was also the first art film I discovered
for myself 30 years ago. Watching this extraordinary, deeply felt,
lived-in sequel to another work by Frisch felt nothing short of
the validation of a life. It makes me feel my faith has been
repaid.

(for A.)

[Oh, and the 2017 film about older man/younger female accolyte
which got the undeserved acclaim? That was PT Anderson's _The
Phantom Thread_, where every character is so fake, the behavior
is so phony, it may as well have come from Mars. Anderson, you
are not fit to tie Schlondorff's shoelace.]

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