"Zurich" or "Die getäuschte Frau" is a co-production between the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium and the result is this film from last year that runs for slightly under 90 minutes. The director is Sacha Polak and it is probably one of his most known and most successful films so far. The writer is Helena van der Meulen and she and Polak also worked together on "Hemel", a fairly successful 2012 film, their most known work to-date. But back to this one here. "Zurich" received some awards attention here in Berlin and also at the Dutch Film Awards. According to IMDb, the first language here is German, but looking at the lead actress' origin, I am not too sure about that. Admittedly, there are a couple German actors in the cast, such as Sascha Alexander Gersak (who I quite like) and Tristan Göbel. But they really don't have a great deal of screen time, especially compared to lead actress Wende Snijders, who is in pretty much every scene of this one. She plays a character who discovers that her deceased boyfriend/husband led a double life and she dives deep into the scene of truck driving (where he worked) in order to find out what was going on exactly. Oh well.. the plot does not sound too interesting, does it? While I appreciated the lead performance on some occasions, I still must say I never cared too much for the character or her fate, at least not as much as I hoped I would. The emotional impact this film has (or I should say "doesn't have") is almost non-existent. Eventually, I can see the artistic approach, but I would only recommend the watch to big fans of Snijders. Everybody else can skip it unless they wanna see the most stunning pregnant woman they have seen in her life. Sadly, she is just a one-scene character and I am also not sure who the actress is that played her. She looked a bit like Claudia Eisinger, but then again she probably is not listed in the cast list here on IMDb as, during the ending credits, there were many more people listed than the 10 or so credited here on IMDb for their performances. Overall, a thumbs-down from me. Not recommended.

At the moment of writing the rating for this movie is 5.9. I believe it should be higher. The movie is very fragmented and therefor it is hard to get into the story, but when you do you're not disappointed.

The movie consists of two parts. First, it starts with a story of a tormented woman trying to find something in the truckers world. Wende Snijders plays this woman, and everybody who already know her from her singing career, knows that she is able to tell a story with just her face. She is exactly right for the role. Whatever the mood, depressed, sad, tired, enjoyed, she can put it in her face. The movie starts with a surreal scene of her next to her car in a canal looking at a cheetah on the water's edge. It ends with a stolen dog being killed by a truck. The second part is a flash-back. It explains why the stealing of the dog is so dramatic, why she is not able to take care of a little girl for a while when she is asked to, and why she pursues that quest in the trucker world.

The structure of the movie seems odd, first a story about the searching woman, followed by a flash back, an explanation how it came to be. But by doing so, the editor was able to use a dramatic scene as the end of the movie. And that really increased the tension.

A clever made, well acted movie, that requires some effort and attention to watch it.

Wende is simply stunning in this movie about love, and the emptiness is leaves behind when love's gone. The atmosphere is somewhat dark, but this fits the volatile nature of the character played by Wende. The film is also not too emotional / dramatic. The balance between drama and realism is always there it seemed to me. It really doesn't make sense to describe the movie any further, because the story itself is quite small. The characters and strong acting make it bigger than the story itself. Go see this movie at home or in a small theater. This does not fit big cinemas, due to the nature of this film. If you like small-drama / road-movies, then this will certainly fit your taste.