AIMEE & JAGUAR

When viewing Aimee & Jaguar, it seems living in Berlin in 1943 was like dancing a frenetic tango on hot coals-with everyone struggling to keep the stink of death at bay. 'Outside people were dying and inside they were playing the proper tune,' claims Ilse (Johanna Wokalek), the film's part-time narrator. 'That was the real Berlin.' In this true story of forbidden love during a cataclysmic time, based on Erica Fischer's book about Lilly Wust's story, director Max Färberböck manages to capture the nightmarish nuances of this historical moment. He depicts lipstick-wearing ladies stepping around corpses en route to the symphony and covertly Jewish women drinking wine at parties after starving all day. With bombs reddening the sky and air raids erupting constantly, it sometimes looks like Hell is opening up and swallowing the city whole.

It is in this context that a dark and unlikely love affair develops between two women-a charismatic member of the Jewish underground and a Nazi-sympathizing mother of four. Discovering in each other a transcendent and mesmerizing escape from their wartime claustrophobia, the two engage in a powerful but perilously fated relationship.

Compellingly attractive and secretly Jewish, Felice Schragenheim (Maria Schrader) works for a Nazi newspaper under a false name. When she is not delivering information to a resistance group, she can be found passionately scribbling poems to her paramour or teasingly flouting convention with her friends. Seemingly impervious to the constant threat of Gestapo arrest, Felice posseses a brazen confidence that is palpable-infusing her slight frame with a captivating intensity. Given that the film's title is inspired by the pet names the two women had for each other, it is no wonder that Felice's is 'Jaguar.'

Cut from a slightly different cloth, the more conventionally lovely Lilly Wust (Juliane Köhler) is a paragon of Nazi motherhood-endowed with 'Aryan' features, four young sons and a subordinate attitude (not to mention a bust of Hitler in the living room). With her husband away on active duty, she seems complacently resigned to her role as the dutiful housewife, though open to romantic liaisons with other sweet-talking Nazis. There is something frail and hungry about her, evocative of both the beauty and the vulnerability of Mia Farrow in The Purple Rose of Cairo. Initially, Lilly seems like a milky tea to Felice's black coffee; she is overwhelmed by Felice's world of strong women, overt lesbianism and playful recklessness. But eventually, she lets herself be lured away from the otherwise oppressive relationships that riddle her life, and is forever changed for it.

What is amazing about this film is how impressively it recreates the period; everything from the cobbled streets to the posturing women has a rich feeling of authenticity, as though Färberböck merely cut and pasted this narrative from old and curling photographs. Enabling this authenticity, Schrader and Köhler's performances are well worth every award they have received (including the Silver Berlin Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival). The two of them really live the film. As Lilly, Köhler has a painfully honest vulnerability and a genuine sweetness. She becomes almost childlike with Felice, as though their affair satisfies a need that was so latent she had to regress to tap it. This is most powerfully evident during their first intimate scene, when Köhler's uncontrollable shaking-of fear, of excitement, of confused pleasure-movingly illustrates Lilly's slightly panicky disorientation. And as if Schrader's dark rosebud lips and penetrating eyes weren't enough, she also brings to Felice a cool sex appeal, wiry, magnetic and controlling. It can be difficult to look elsewhere when she is on screen.

While the story takes place during World War II, the film unspools from a perspective of 50 years later, as some of the surviving players live out their remaining years in reflective sobriety. Given this perspective, the only odd element of the film is that Ilse, Lilly's maid and Felice's friend and jealous former lover, has a very uneven role, sometimes providing a guiding voice-over and other times meaninglessly fading into the background. It is unclear what Färberböck meant to do with her, and while her inconsistency is not invasive, it is unfortunate.

Nonetheless, this is a beautiful love story. We are lucky that, at 80 years of age, Wust decided to share her experiences-they are pretty incredible to behold.