There are few actors who can do more with just their eyes than Nina Hoss (a regular collaborator of the director Christian Petzold, she was most recently seen in Stéphanie Chuat and Véronique Reymond’s My Little Sister). Here, she builds an entire character – angular, complex, frequently contradictory – out of flickering glances and the fretful crease between her brows. She is perfect casting in German director Ina Weisse’s drama in which so much is left unvoiced, in which secrets hang in the air like a jarring, discordant note in a concert performance.
Hoss plays Anna, a violin teacher at a prestigious conservatoire. She is, like her instrument, highly strung. There’s an anguished hunger in those eyes when she first hears new pupil Alexander (Ilja Monti) play. His technique is raw, but she spots his talent and argues his case with her dismissive colleagues. But her quest to shape the boy into an audition-ready virtuoso becomes all-consuming – chilling her marriage to Philippe (Simon Abkarian) and distancing her son, Jonas (Serafin Mishiev), also a student at the conservatoire. The slow creep of the camera mirrors the incremental build in pressure; this is the kind of tension that feels like a tightening chokehold on the audience.
