"The change of Faber's nationality, from a Swiss in the novel to an American here erases Frisch's aim to echo Faber's decision to leave his Jewish girlfriend who is pregnant with his child behind on the eve of WWII, with Switzerland's own iffy neutral position and function during the war, so that pungent sense of comeuppance is diluted in the end, and Elisabeth, played by Delpy with an appealing air of ethereality and spontaneity, is over-simply reduced to a nubile object of desire and later, an"Agnus Dei" sacrifice (with that pestilent, slithering symbol of original sin). Schlöndorff's picture fails to enrich the story from her perspective, for one thing, her reaction after realizing Faber is a former friend of both her parents, is perversely unrealistic, anyone else would be piqued to pump him for more past details, but Elisabeth knowingly clams up, as if such discovery barely interests her. For a cis-gender, heterosexual male director, whose naturally less inclined curiosity of female characters's interiority is quite the sign of the times, Schlöndorff is guilty as charged."
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