Butler's Cinema Scene

Diane Krueger

“IN THE FADE”  My rating: B+

106 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“In the Fade” may get a bit fuzzy around the edges, but its center is as solid as an anvil.

German actress Diane Kruger is utterly compelling  in writer/director Fatih Akin’s  tale of a woman attempting to come to terms with the terrorist killing of her husband and son. Even when the film threatens to bog down in courtroom cliches, Krueger’s fierce/fragile performance holds us in its grasp.

Small wonder the role won her best actress honors at last spring’s Cannes Film Festival. (“In the Fade” also won a Golden Globe as best foreign language film, which raises the question of why it hasn’t gotten a theatrical run here in Kansas City…but that’s another story.)

The picture begins with cellphone footage of the German prison wedding of convicted drug dealer  Nuri (Numan Acar) to party-girl hottie Katja (Kruger).

It then cuts to the couple’s post-prison life.  Years later we find them blissfully wed,  parents to six-year-old son Rocco (Rafael Santana), and operating a thriving small business in Homburg. Nuri’s criminal past is a distant memory. They appear to be model citizens.

Their cozy existence is shattered when a bomb goes off in their business office and Nuri and Rocco are killed. The authorities eventually pin the crime on a neo-Nazi married couple,  Edda and Andre (Hanna Hilsdorf, Ulrich Friedrich Brandhoff) who nurse deep-seated prejudices against Middle Eastern emigres.

“In the Fade” is really two movies. The more obvious one involves the prosecution of the bombers, with Katja as a major witness (she saw Edda leave a bicycle and parcel outside the office a few minutes before the blast), and it’s been calculated to instill in the viewer a case of righteous indignation when the court rules there is insufficient evidence for a conviction.

At this point Katja goes rogue, following the pair across Europe and dodging threats from the neo-fascist underground in order to track  her prey. In other words, the movie becomes a late-blooming thriller.

The courtroom maneuvering and the amateur sleuthing are fairly melodramatic and at times unbelievable.

What gives the film real power — and the ability to look past its limitations — is Kruger’s knockout performance, which follows Katja from  shock and loss through depression, isolation, broken hopes and a deepening vigilantism. Kruger offers a plausible and moving explanation for how an unremarkable working-class woman might herself become a bomb-planting avenging angel.

| Robert W. Butler