UNDINE

Director's Statement

“You humans! You monsters!” Thus begins Ingeborg Bachmann’s narration “Undine Leaves”. Undine is the betrayed woman of the waters. According to the myth, she lives in a lake in the forest. A man who’s fatefully enamoured with a woman, whose love is unrequited and hopeless, who no longer knows what to do with himself or his feelings, who suffers absolute despair ... can enter the forest, go to the banks of the lake and cry out Undine’s name. And she’ll come. And love him. Their love is a pact that may never be betrayed. And if it is betrayed, then the man must die. Then it comes to pass that he who loves and is loved seems easy and free, lovable and desirable once more. In the myth, the previously hopelessly adored woman suddenly becomes interested in the man again. And he leaves Undine to marry her, his first love. On the night of their wedding, Undine enters the bedroom and embraces the man in a bubble of water that’s going to drown him. “I wept him to death!” she stammers at the scuttling servants before disappearing into the lake in the forest. Our Undine is a city historian in Berlin, giving guided tours for the Senate Administration for Urban Development. She has just been left and betrayed by someone whose name is Johannes. Going by the myth, she would take revenge on Johannes and kill him, but Undine defies the myth. She doesn’t want to return to the curse, to the lake in the forest. She doesn’t want to leave. She wants to love. She meets someone else. And it’s this love story that UNDINE tells.