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Newest Reviews: New Movies - Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter Old Movies - Touki Bouki: The Journey of the Hyena The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry Archives - Recap: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 , 2005, 2006, 2007 , 2008 , 2009 , 2010 , 2011 , 2012
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Aimee & Jaguar (Max Farberbock) Max Farberbock’s first feature, Aimee & Jaguar,
builds such a strong opening act that it’s almost tragic when things settle
into a happy groove. The film, which is stunningly acted by its leads, follows
Lilly (Juliane Kohler), a somewhat repressed housewife to an Army solider, and
Felice (Maria Schrader), a Jewish lesbian that seems embroiled in some sort of
lesbian resistance, as they form a relationship in WWII Berlin. Obviously,
Felice must keep her religion secret, but her sexuality is an added burden. She
is forced to live a lie on so many levels that when she takes a convenient
interest in Lilly (after ending up homeless), you can’t help but question her
motives. Lilly seems to have never before flirted with the idea that she is a
lesbian, and her early scenes show her pursuing affairs with men in an apparent
attempt to anger her away-at-war husband. There’s a suggestion that her
lesbianism is only her latest ploy to gain her husband’s attention. For both
of them, any subversive act that they can perpetrate becomes a blow to the
oppression that the Nazi regime has caused them to endure. The film walks a
tightrope here, creating a giddy sense of danger that energizes the film as it
piles on reasons why both of these characters need this relationship to work,
and it manages to sustain a complex believability for an exceptional length of
time. I definitely felt the final half hour of the film became
much less interesting, however. What was a startling example of the necessity to
manipulate others and disregard their emotions in order to survive during the
Holocaust descends into a bit of lesbian wish fulfillment. It’s as if we’re
supposed to cheer these women for doing what they’re doing while there's so
much evil in their world. I suppose that’s a worthy thing to celebrate, but
it’s hardly an interesting one, especially since the audience knows the
circumstances under which the relationship began, and that makes their newfound
happiness seem delusional on some level. The film was based on a true story
(though I am not sure quite how faithful what we see is to reality) so such
complaints might be a bit unjustified, but there’s something to be said for
knowing when to stop telling your story, be it fiction or nonfiction. As it is,
it allows the blame for the relationship’s failure to shift to the
ever-present bad guys of cinema, the Nazis, despite the extraordinary first
ninety minutes of the film that exposed that failure as the result of the
relationship’s faulty construction. *** October, 2001 Jeremy Heilman |