Review of Aimée & Jaguar (1999) by Ld P — 07 Oct 2009

Aimee and Jaguar (1998)(Lilly and Felice's pet names for each other) is based on a true story. Although Ms. Schragenheim is believed to have died in a forced march from a Nazi camp, Ms. Wust (Felice) is 86 and still lives in Berlin.

The memoirs of Lilly Wust,-story of two women who fall in love in 1943 Berlin: Lilly (Juliane Köhler), the wife of a Nazi officer, and Felice (Maria Schrader), a Jewish journalist . This is a girl movie for WWII.

They are lesbians and Jewish. One could not expect to survive long in war time Berlin with these words attached to their name but these girls did. This is an excellent and exciting film. In this movie it is clear the Germans are losing the war.

The women do what they can to survive. The script portrayed a Germany of decadence: women wearing tuxedos, smoky nightclubs filled with couples of ambiguous gender, pudgy capitalists & Officers pulling on cigars a general excess of eye makeup.

Also stylistically the film relies on the dramatic and visual conventions of another era -- of the Weimar Republic, as represented in films like G. W. Pabst's "Pandora's Box" (whose star, Louise Brooks, bears a passing resemblance to Ms.

Schrader's Felice) and Josef von Sternberg's "Blue Angel" (with Ms. Köhler's Lilly echoing Marlene Dietrich's blond wave and dangling cigarette). However these things do not affect my rating.

The filmâ??s success is the fantastic interplay of its two stars. Schrader and Kohler feed off each other beautifully, the intensity of their dynamic growing with every scene, and the sequence in which they confront Felice's Judaism is as impressive as you hope it will be and more.

"Great people leave a mark, and when they leave, the mark remains." So says a Nazi functionary, quoting Joseph Goebbels. In an irony the filmmakers no doubt intend, the romantic mark left by these two women turns out to be very great indeed.

This is great story telling. Great productions values in this one also. Fantastic cinematography and set decoration really lavish. This film is about the power of falling in love--no matter whether you are man or woman!! four stars.

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