In ‘Princess and Warrior,’ a Dazzling Fable of Love

Only a filmmaker of talent, daring and confidence could have a prayer of pulling off a romantic thriller as audacious as “The Princess and the Warrior.” However, Germany’s prodigious Tom Tykwer, reunited with his charismatic “Run Lola Run” star Franka Potente, is just the man for the job.

In collaboration with a cinematographer, Frank Griebe, who can seemingly do anything with a camera, and with composers Johnny Kilmek and Reinhold Heil, with whom Tykwer himself created a tense, mood-sustaining score, the director has fashioned a superior entertainment. Endlessly imaginative and unpredictable, “The Princess and the Warrior” is a heady yet disciplined work, a dazzling fable of love, destiny and redemption.

A plot loaded with twists and turns is set in motion when a young woman, living in an old house perched on a remote promontory overlooking the sea, asks her friend Sissi (Potente) to handle some business for her at a bank in the bustling city of Wuppertal--Tykwer’s hometown. A dedicated nurse at a psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of the city, Sissi never makes it to the bank because she is struck by a large truck; she almost certainly would have died had not a young man, Bodo (Benno Furmann), performed a tracheotomy on her. As suddenly as he appeared, he vanishes.

After almost two months in the hospital, Sissi, who suffered a broken leg and presumably other injuries, is released to a warm welcome upon her return to work. But the normally assured Sissi finds herself thrown for a loop. She remarks to a colleague that she feels overcome with a sense that nothing will ever be the same again, and a perceptive colleague suggests that in reality she fears that everything will be the same. In the momentary clasp of Bodo’s hand, Sissi felt a mystical bond that seems emotional and sexual. With little to go on, not even his name, Sissi is determined to find Bodo.

In writing his script, Tykwer has followed one of Hitchcock’s basic precepts in creating suspense: keeping the audience in the know while keeping the protagonists in the dark. In short we already know why Bodo happened to be on hand to come to Sissi’s rescue, and we will soon be discovering more about him than Sissi does. Of course, neither they nor we will get the full picture until a finish that includes a stroke of exceptional inspiration. All that needs be said of the mind-boggling unfolding of the story is to remark that, if Sissi is a young woman who discovers she has the capacity to risk everything for love, then Bodo is a young man who rejects love more strongly than anything else.

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This film demands much more acting than sprinting from Potente than “Run Lola Run” did, and she is more than up to the challenge, creating a compelling portrait of a young woman who beneath a demure surface is as coolly daring as a comic book heroine. Furmann’s rugged Bodo is a man in torment and desperation for a much greater reason than we at first realize. Sissi’s charges at the hospital possess more impact and individuality than is usually the case with movie depictions of mental patients, and Joachim Krol lends a strong presence as Bodo’s staunch, protective older brother.

“The Princess and the Warrior,” which is more like Tykwer’s terrific “Winter Sleeper” than like the celebrated “Lola,” has been constructed with a bravura circularity and a bold fatalistic use of coincidence. Two hours and seven minutes is a lengthy running time for any kind of movie--especially a romantic thriller--but it’s exactly right for “The Princess and the Warrior,” a film that never falters for an instant.

* MPAA rating: R, for disturbing images, language and some sexual content. Times guidelines: The film is too intense and brutal for children; adult themes and situations.

‘The Princess and the Warrior’

Franka Potente: Sissi

Benno Furmann: Bodo

Joachim Krol: Walter

Lars Rudolph: Steini

A Sony Pictures Classics release of an X Filme Creative Pool production. Writer-director Tom Tykwer. Producers Stafan Arndt, Maria Kopf. Cinematographer Frank Griebe. Editor Mathilde Bonnefoy. Music Tykwer, Johnny Kilmek and Reinhold Heil. Sound designer Dirk Jacobs. Costumes Monika Jacobs. Set designer Uli Hanisch. In German, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes.

Exclusively at the Nuart, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., West Los Angeles, (310) 478-6379.