The Most Beautiful Couple

The Most Beautiful Couple follows Malte (Maximilian Brückner) and Liv (Luise Heyer) as their vacation takes a disturbing turn after they’re attacked by Sascha (Leonard Kunz) and his goons, with the remainder of the film detailing the married pair’s subsequent efforts at moving on with their lives. Filmmaker Sven Taddicken undeniably does an effective job of initially capturing the viewer’s interest and attention, as The Most Beautiful Couple kicks off with a fairly harrowing stretch detailing the aforementioned violent assault – with the visceral impact of this sequence heightened by the actors’ stirring work. (Heyer is especially and frequently heartbreaking here.) The movie, past that point, segues into a deliberately-paced and somewhat erratic narrative focused mostly on Malte’s growing obsession with catching Sascha, with the movie benefiting substantially from the suspense stemming from Malte’s surreptitious pursuit of their attacker (eg there’s a rather riveting sequence in which Malte and Liv, having been drawn into her husband’s illicit activities, follow Sascha to his workplace). The somewhat hit-and-miss nature of the picture’s second half ultimately dulls the impact of its finale (ie the whole thing doesn’t really seem to add up to much), and yet there’s ultimately no denying that The Most Beautiful Couple generally succeeds as a portrait of a couple attempting to recover from a traumatic event.

*** out of ****