You’ve seen this movie before, only not in German. Fleeing an abusive and possibly dangerous ex-husband, Yella (the perpetually wary, skittish Nina Hoss) follows the prospect of a new job—and new life—to a sterile hotel and a series of glassy conference rooms where she parses the spreadsheets of a traveling businessman who seems quite uninterested in her unhappy past. They form a team, traveling hotel to hotel, meeting to meeting, bluffing companies in need of investors, then exchanging envelopes full of cash in darkened parking lots. It’s a shady limbo world that suits the businessman (Devid Striesow) just fine; if their activities are illegal, that doesn’t bother him, either. Yella seems OK with the financial deceptions, too, only she keeps suffering these recurrent ear problems caused by an automotive mishap early in the film. Why does she keep hearing the sound of roaring water? Would that Yella, seen at SIFF ’07, had concentrated on being an updated Bonnie and Clyde instead of answering that question. Swindlers, and later lovers, on the road is a movie that works in any language. Unfortunately, Yella‘s final narrative detour is just as universal, and just as much a gimmick.