I’m not usually very interested in war movies. In fact war is the least interesting genre of any entertainment to me. But AV Club had this movie near the top of their best of 2015 list, so I checked it out on a whim.
Phoenix is about a woman who escaped from a concentration camp in World War Two, with severe damage to her face. After reconstructive surgery, she looks like a different person, and seeks out her husband only to find that he doesn’t recognize her. Not only that, but he tries to get her to pretend to be his wife–i.e, herself–in order to collect an inheritance.
You can tell a movie is going to be good when right from the first minutes, you are glued to the screen. It was refreshing to watch something so well crafted and paced and acted.
This movie is very tense, and there is a lot of buildup throughout, with the interactions between her and her husband and the strange, intriguing plot. And the final scene is one of the more stunning endings I’ve seen in a long time.
Check it out!
Jonas David 