U, 110mins

A two-month season dedicated to films of Wim Wenders at the BFI Southbank prompts the theatrical rerelease of one of his earliest films, the melancholy 1974 road movie Alice in the Cities. Given the enduring high regard for some of Wenders’s work from his heyday in the Eighties and Nineties, and his fall from critical and commercial grace during the past decade, it’s perhaps surprising that a more populist title – Paris, Texas or Wings of Desire – was not chosen for an extended run. But in this gentle black-and-white meditation on identity and self-discovery, many of Wenders’s preferred themes are evident.

There’s a conflicted relationship with America – both fascination and repulsion are experienced by Philip, a German journalist in the throes of an existential crisis, whose road trip around the States has left him with writer’s block and a dose of angst the size of Dusseldorf.

Philip’s sense of purpose is reignited when he finds himself the unwilling guardian of a nine-year-old girl called Alice, whose mother has apparently abandoned her into his care. It’s a premise that would be equally at home under a tabloid headline about unfit mothers or as a feel-good Hollywood comedy about the redemptive friendship between curmudgeon and kid. But in Wenders’s hands the story has a meditative sadness; it’s a tender but unsentimental portrait.

In a film in which the majority of the performances fall some way short of excellent, the revelation is a lovely turn from the young Yella Rottländer as Alice. The character is an authentically infuriating kid but there’s a freshness and conviction to her performance that gives the whole film its purpose and clarity. This subdued, quietly affecting film is a good way for disaffected Wenders fans to rekindle their love.

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