| AIMEE & JAGUAR Director: Max Farberbock "Love has a volcanic strength to sweep people away, to liberate them. [This] film is a kind of tribute to the possibilities of life. Felice and Lilly's fate was to really experience something which has been rediscovered over and over again in the great classical stories, love which attracts death." Director Max Faberbock Aimee & Jaguar is a superbly directed and acted German film about a love that dare not speak its name in 1943 Nazi Germany. Based on the true story -- taken from a book written by Erica Fisher -- the film is about a lesbian relationship that developed between a mother of four, married to a Nazi officer, and a young Jewish woman who was part of the resistance underground. Director Max Farberbock sets the stage in modern day Germany with the former Nazi woman Lilly confronting an old friend. Told in a voice-over flashback we see how Lilly met her lover-to-be, Felice, through a mutual friend. At first they are nothing but acquaintances and then Felice writes Lilly an ardent love letter as a joke and soon they meet. Lilly and Felice strike a good friendship and in time Lilly realizes that she has found the love she has always wanted from this radical, sensitive and intelligent woman. What she doesn't know is that Felice is a Jewish woman disguising herself as a Nazi. A fact that doesn't matter much anyway since she falls in love so completely. The problem is that there is no way these two women can be together in Nazi Germany; not only are they from different classes, cultures and backgrounds, but socially their friendship is anathema. Add to this the homosexual relationship and you have a potential fire starter dilemma. Juliane Kohler who plays Lilly gives one of the better performances on screen this year. Her emotions run the gamut from stable and tough to vulnerable and weak yet she handles her character with a great amount of skill and dignity. Maria Schrader is remarkable too as the clever and defiant Felice who has to risk her life to keep her identity hidden from the Nazis. Despite the passionate and provocative subject matter Aimee & Jaguar is very subtly directed, beautiful to look at and the pacing is just about perfect. Director Farberbock wants us to feel the passion through the performances so he restrains from beating us over the head with propaganda or fancy camerawork. The relationship builds and for a while it's easy to forget the impossibility that their love represents. Then one morning when Lilly's husband comes home from the war and notices an orgy going on in his house the jig is up. Lilly has two choices: Be a responsible mother, a good Nazi and stay married or run away with her lover and her new friends and keep on running. Even though Aimee & Jaguar is a button-pushing movie, it never takes advantage of its hot subject instead choosing to be a tasteful character driven drama with a lot of psychological and cultural subtext. This film could play on Masterpiece Theatre and few people would blink. For some this could be a drawback especially if they want something a little more risqué but despite the occasional soft edges the film is potent in what it implies about the politics of relationships and the sacrifices that needed to be made in Germany during the 1940's. Matt Langdon |