“[I]n some vague way she felt cheated of real life by her own comfort.”
Irene, married to a well-known scientist, has a perfect marriage on the outside, but her heart is actually set on her affair with the composer Heinz. When his jealous girlfriend gets wind of the affair, she threatens to expose them and begins to blackmail Irene with brazen demands for money. Their lives increasingly get out of joint... Six years after GERMANY, YEAR ZERO, the last collaboration of the former dream couple Bergman/Rossellini takes us to a gloomy, rainy post-war Munich, arguably also reflecting the doomed state of their own marriage.
- Florian Widegger / Programme Director, Filmarchiv Austria