Christian Petzold’s German translation of James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice. Of course James Cain held no patent on deadly love triangles, and indeed the cucumber harvest here brings to mind Elmore Leonard’s facsimile, The Big Bounce — not the dreadful movie remake of 2004 but the underappreciated adaptation of 1969. (Excellent, educational shots, in the bargain, of the pickle pickers stretched out prone on the slow-moving mechanical rig, a couple of feet above the ground.) This unpretentious bare-bones rehash, too elemental for copyright infringement, justifies itself not by the altered ironic ending (a bit too ironic for belief) but by the filmmaker’s precise, understated, no-waste style, with dexterous use of subjective cameras from differing points of view. Benno Fürmann, Nina Hoss, Hilmi Sözen. (2008) — Duncan Shepherd
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