Fatih Akin's 'Ghost Song' Opens San Sebastian With Gorgeous Ghosts, Little Else

Fatih Akin's "Ghost Song" opened this year's San Sebastian Film Festival, and the verdict is familiar: the director still hasn't matched his mid-2000s peak. Since "Head-On" and "Edge of Heaven" swept festivals back to back, Akin has hopscotched across genres — the Diane Kruger thriller "In the Fade," the hip-hop biopic "Rhinegold" — without recovering that earlier rigor. "Ghost Song" continues the pattern.

The film follows two 20-year-olds conducting their early courtship across the mortal divide. It's earnest, a little clunky, and takes a simplistic inspirational approach to complex metaphysical questions. It's also accessible, attractive, and shot in glistening monochrome. A youth-skewing hit is not out of the question.

What is 'Ghost Song' about?

Farasha, played by luminous first-timer Mariam Dawoud, is a Syrian refugee settled in Hamburg with her family after an interstitial stint in Turkey. She wears a traditional headscarf and studies physics at university, following her late father's path. She also hides at least one haram (forbidden under Islamic law) secret from her mother: a butterfly tattoo on her stomach.

At a graduation party in Hamburg's imposing Telemichel tower, she meets fellow graduate Faris (Eren M. Guvercin), a tousle-haired, German-born Muslim of Turkish descent. With her tipsy bestie Una (Carlotta von Falkenhayn), they pile into his car. An accident sends the vehicle into the Elbe river, parceled out deliberately — and somewhat luridly — across the film's running time.

Faris wakes in hospital. Farasha has drowned. But she finds she can still walk the Earth, unseen and unheard by everyone except her father, who tells her that for 40 days — the mourning period in certain Muslim traditions — she can visit the living in their dreams. Still lovestruck and not yet accepting her death, she seizes the chance to keep seeing Faris. The courtship that follows grows increasingly dangerous.

Does the romance hold up?

Not really. The film rests on the idea that one evening produced a soul connection death can't sever. That's an intensely romantic notion not borne out by these wan characters, however individually charismatic the young actors. Akin's naïve, slightly purple writing keeps sentimentally reiterating the pair's devotion, mining tension from which will make the biggest sacrifice, but says little of spiritual or philosophical substance.

The family material lands harder. A literal out-of-body scene, in which Farasha watches her family ritually clean and prepare her corpse for burial, is the film's most layered and haunting passage.

Why all the Wenders comparisons?

The inky black-and-white photography, making prominent use of major German city landmarks, practically begs comparison to Wim Wenders' "Wings of Desire" — another atmospheric romantic fantasy about love spanning the mortal and ethereal realms. "Ghost Song" is the Hamburg-set, Gen Z-focused homage to Wenders' Berlin classic. Placing the two side by side doesn't flatter the thinner, less lyrical new work. It's a marketable resemblance all the same.

Akin also asserts his own identity through Muslim faith, interrogated and interpreted by his young, multicultural characters. The film has been simultaneously adapted into a graphic novel by Akin and artist Bea Davies — a further sign of its generational targeting.

Is it worth seeing for the visuals?

Where the writing veers into the superficial or kitsch, the film falls back on lush mood and widescreen riches. Being a ghost has rarely looked this pretty on screen. Frank Griebe, Tom Tykwer's regular cinematographer, works with Akin for the first time here, and turns even Hamburg's unlovelier spots into a chiaroscuro (extreme light-dark contrast) lovers' playground — finding as much intimacy in a brutalist monument as in an ordinary darkened bedroom.

Iridescently illustrated title cards disrupt the stark monochrome. So do the moments before the closing credits, when the characters' worlds flood into color alongside a crucial, life-or-death choice.

Beautiful ghosts, then. Whether that's enough to restore Akin's top form, San Sebastian audiences will decide.