“Dying is an art, like everything else.”
Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)

Tykwer makes his feature film debut with a hermetic study in suffering and humiliation. His latent talent emerges in every sequence, and his eagerness to take risks is already apparent.  His heroine, Maria, shares many of the same traits as Tykwer’s women in Wintersleepers, The Princess and the Warrior and Heaven.  She’s repressed and numbed by her experiences in childhood and marriage.  Her mother died while giving birth to her, and her father, a brooding, contemptuous creature, keeps her away from the outside world.   Maria must serve first him and then her husband, an equally truculent, possessive individual. 

In this loveless world, Maria finds refuge in her secret hoard of letters.  Ever since adolescence, she has been writing but never posting them.  Through them, we learn of her childhood and youth.  Her other ray of hope is the bachelor who lives in the same apartment block.  Almost as reticent and insecure as Maria, he has filled his flat with piles of old newspapers, from which he compiles reference books. 

Fundamentally, the film is a conflict between survival and extinction.  Maria has been in the presence of death for as long as she can remember – and her father and husband are both “living dead,”  seeing out each day in a series of mechanical, emotionless rituals (sex included).  She herself collects insects, something that foretells the grisly dénouement.  Her descent into madness reminds us of Polanski’s Repulsion, and the macabre, claustrophobic apartment owes something to The Silence of the Lambs – although the production design prefigures much of Tykwer’s own future work.  The use of sombre reds in both decoration and costumes underscores the expressionist tone of Deadly Maria.  So too does the murky camerawork by Frank Griebe, who has become an essential member of Tykwer’s team during the past decade.  His lighting skills are exemplified in the baleful, recurring shot gazing up the staircase to the room where Maria’s father lies paralysed.

The surrealist dream sequences give an edge to the suspense and the horror, and also counterpoint Tykwer’s theme of inarticulacy.  Every character in the film seems clenched, unable to communicate with others.  This leads inevitably to frustration, anger, and desperation, notably where love is concerned.  The father has suffered a stroke when he finds Maria kissing a student from her high school, and spends the rest of his days paralysed, and exacting a grim revenge.  He “collects” her first suitor, Heinz, as Maria herself collects flies, and makes him a prisoner of the household.  The irony is that Heinz in turn becomes as domineering as the father.  Only when both men are dead can Maria herself seek liberation by committing suicide.  The ambivalence of the ending reveals in Tykwer a poetic reluctance to let his leading characters come to naught.

The amazing thing about Deadly Maria is that, despite its gruesome story, it remains such an exhilarating film to watch.  Tykwer experiments in every department. His soundtrack is a medley of original, electronic music, and extracts from classical pieces to suit a specific mood (although it’s a pity that Saint-Saëns’s “Aquarium”, so romantic in context here, should now be associated with the opening of every presentation at the Cannes Festival).  Tykwer casts three actresses in the part of Maria, representing her in childhood, adolescence, and womanhood, rather as Alan Parker would do in Angela’s Ashes. The dialogue, which the director wrote with Christiane Voss, has that stop-start quality reminiscent of Harold Pinter or David Mamet, and is built on a crumbling base of misunderstanding at every level. 

Tykwer loves to dolly in and out of his character’s faces, or to glide around them in ever-nearing circles.  In the few external sequences, Maria is seen drifting through the streets in slow-motion, as though everyday life were a dream-state, and her “twilight zone” apartment the actual world.  When Maria suddenly starts chattering to her neighbour, Tykwer emphasises the moment with a series of rapid dissolves, both visual and verbal.  Like Franka Potente’s Lola, Maria has a sixth sense that alarms her at moments of crisis.  Like Lola, too, she knows the importance of time, and the inexorable movement of the minute-hand on the kitchen clock becomes a trademark not just here but throughout Tykwer’s career. 

Nina Petri’s performance as Maria in present time represents a remarkable achievement, pared down to essentials and proudly rejecting any sympathy.  Josef Bierbichler gives the father a controlled rage, an animalistic quality that bursts to the surface during the scene when he’s being bathed by Maria.  Péter Franke as Heinz, Maria’s husband, is equally restrained, seeming to age literally with each passing sequence – almost dead before his death.  Joachim Król as the archivist who beguiles Maria has a shyness that makes him in many ways the hero of the film.