In a lesser film these flourishes might all build up to a conclusive ‘it was all a dream’ plot-twist. Instead, we see a complex interplay of realities, wherein Undine is just as fantastical a figure as Christoph is and vice versa. In this, Petzold asserts that love itself is an act of fantasy and myth-making in the mind of the other. For Undine, Christoph is the aquarium diver figurine come to life. For Christoph, Undine’s name is tattooed on rusted iron underwater. The film lays out its terms clearly: to love someone is to build a universe together that breaks through the bounds of reality and to lose love, is to lose one’s world. “If you leave me, I’ll have to kill you,” Undine tells Johannes at the start, the one last gambit to make him stay and a reference to the mythological undine who kill their human husbands if they are betrayed. This type of intensity pervades the film, and Petzold elevates it to its fairy tale extremes.

Running alongside this vision of love as an act of myth-making is the ever present parallel to the history of Berlin imbued in the Berlin Palace. In one of the more remarkable scenes in the film, Undine recites her tour to Christoph in the bedroom. It’s a clever moment that at once captures the intimacy of sharing your mundane routine with a partner while winding the city’s history into the lovers’ private myth. The original Berlin Palace which traced back to the 15th century was partially destroyed in WWII. Then demolished and rebuilt in modern style as the Palace of the Republic by the Soviet GDR in the 70s. Subsequently demolished again, post-reunification, and is only now in the process of finally being rebuilt as a museum with an old-style facade and a modern interior. The two myths entwined together.