Alice in the Cities

Spearheading a retrospective of the work of German writer-director Wim Wenders at BFI Southbank, this bittersweet gem from 1974 delivers an ambling tale of loss and estrangement which rings as true today as itwould have more than 30 years ago. Philip Winter (Rüdiger Volger) is the disenchanted German journalist who is mooching across America in desperate search of a muse. While in New York, he is thrown together with cherubic, inquisitive and testy young lass Alice (Yella Röttlander), who has been abandoned by her mother, and the pair decide to travel back to Europe with no real idea of where the road will take them. The film is full of love/hate relationships, an idea that is physically represented by the prickly bond between Philip and Alice , but who also symbolise Wenders’ own bewilderment (and wide-eyed fascination) with the architecture, advertising, music, photography and inescapable cultural-sprawl of the US. There are points when the director allows his voice to ring a little loudly from behind the camera, but the richness and depth of both the photography and the characterisation manage to brush any signs of preachiness and sentimentality from view.