Aimée & Jaguar

Plot synopsis:
The film explores the lives of the characters Felice Schragenheim (Maria Schrader), a Jewish woman who assumed a false name and who belongs to an underground organization, and Lilly Wust (Juliane Köhler), a married mother of four children, unsatisfied with her philandering Nazi officer husband.
The film begins in 1997, with an 83-year-old Lilly (played by Inge Keller) taking up residence in a dilapidated flat that once served as an underground hideout. Brought to a retirement home, Lilly encounters her old maid Ilse (played by Johanna Wokalek in the 1940s, by Kyra Mladeck in 1997), who was rounded up during 1945, and is already a tenant.
In 1943, Felice, assuming a false last name and working as a journalist at a Nazi newspaper, meets Lilly via her friend and sometimes lover Ilse, who works as Lilly's housekeeper. Instantly smitten, she takes the initiative in the love affair by sending flagrant letters to Lilly and signing her name as Jaguar, much to Ilse's dismay. One fateful afternoon, Felice, Ilse, and their friends Klara and Lotte are accosted by German soldiers, and all but Lotte manage to escape. Shot down by the soldiers, they find no identification on Lotte's body except for a photograph of her and Felice. Lonely due to the constant absence of her husband, Lilly engages in a series of affairs with other men, but is disillusioned by the callous treatment of her latest tryst with another Nazi officer. She grows closer to Felice, who attempts to kiss her during a New Year's Eve Party in her Berlin apartment after Lilly discovers her philandering husband with Ilse, but rejects her. As her husband tries to make amends with her the following morning, Lilly realizes she has never loved him and reconciles with Felice.
With her husband again away at war, Lilly and Felice begin a shaky but intense relationship. The film features both erotic encounters and sentimental love poems (quoted from the book), and during one love scene Felice proclaims Lilly is an Aimée to Felice as Jaguar. On Lilly's birthday, Felice and her friends throw a party in her apartment that culminates in a lesbian orgy. Lilly is mortified when she sees Ilse and Felice kissing drunkenly, and further disillusioned when Felice rejects her advances for the night. The next morning, Lilly’s husband arrives on special leave for his wife's birthday only to witness the aftermath of the previous night's events. Although enraged, he vows to not punish her for her indiscretion so long that their marriage and life remain intact, but Lilly instead surprises him by asking for a divorce. Afraid that her husband may turn them in, Felice and her friends stop seeing Lilly for the sake of their own survival. Heartbroken, Lilly holes up in her apartment, eventually sending her children away to safety, and erupts in anger when Felice finally visits her after several weeks. Felice reveals the truth that she is Jewish and feared for her life, and the two make up.
After the 20 July Plot, Felice and her friends fear for their lives and arrange to flee Germany before they are rounded up. At the last moment, Felice decides to stay in spite of the danger so that she may remain with Lilly. After a day of frolicking in the countryside, the two return to Lilly's apartment where Felice is captured by the Gestapo, using the photograph of her and Lotte to identify her. She is sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp from where the two still manage to correspond, but all contact is lost by the end of 1944.
Lilly and Ilse reminisce about times past as the film ends. Lilly, though saddened by the tragedy that she caused her friends and lovers, is unable to imagine how her life could have been any different, given her obsessive live-for-today-for-tomorrow-we-die mentality, common among besieged Berliners. Lilly Wust lived in Berlin until her death on 31 March 2006. The tagline of the film is "Love Transcends Death".

Tags: violence, queer, murder, romantic, flashback

Review:
A True Unconventional and Sensitive Love Story, In a Sad Period of German History.
In Berlin, along the Second World War, Felice Schragenheim (Maria Schrader) is a bright Jewish lesbian working in a Nazi newspaper under a false identity and being member of a resistance organization.
This true unconventional and sensitive love story, in a sad period of German history, is a wonderful movie.
Although dealing with lesbian love, this powerful, unforgettable and touching romance is one of the most beautiful film I have recently seen.
Surprisingly enough Lilly loves her back and they begin an irresistible and passionate affair, which at the time and circumstances back there was like dancing on a volcano Of course the film deals with WWII and the holocaust here but the best thing about it is that it's only done on the side.
It's all so intensive and it's not all about two suffering girls who lived in a horrible time and were not allowed to love each other, it's about two strong women with a lust for life who tried not to care too much about the Nazi regime, but to concentrate on seizing the day.
Later, yielding to her needs, Lilly goes to bed with Felice, who makes gentle love to her and suggests that Lilly be "Aimee" while she, Felice, be called "Jaguar." I must say that this scene, which is no more erotic than it should be, is a tour de force on the part of the actress playing Lilly.
This is a beautiful story and a haunting film, set in crumbling Berlin near the end of Germany's second run at world domination.
She runs with a pack of party-girls, lesbians all, who butterfly their nights away living for the moment in the face of destruction, persecution, and death.Lilly is a German housewife with four children and a husband on the Russian front.
She is introduced, however, as a mistress to a Nazi officer, and the viewer sees immediately that Lilly is simply lost...dutifully serving out her role(s) to the men in her life, yet stricken with a suspicion that love has escaped her.Then she meets Felice...The affair transforms both women.
Lilly finds love and discovers who she really is, while Felice finds a reason to stop running.It's easy to forget that bravery in wartime is not reserved solely fo combat soldiers.
As one of the minor characters points out late in the film, love should be appreciated wherever it can take root---especially when times and situations seem impossibly chaotic.This director offers an underlying gentleness that makes the movie all the more effective.
An impressing love-story in war-time Berlin..
She finally finds love in Felice (brilliant: Maria Schrader), a Jewish girl, part of the Berlin Lesbian scene.
This wonderful German production, based on fact, tells the story of a lesbian love affair at the height of the war in Berlin, between a Jewish woman concealing her identity from the authorities and a loyal German mother of four whose husband is serving in the army.
And this near-normal background throws into sharp relief the ghastly horror of the Nazi regime, its vain pursuit of total victory, and its fanatical hatred and persecution of Jews.The acting of principals Maria Schrader as Felice Schragenheim (Jaguar) and Juliane Köhler as Lilly Wust (Aimée) has an integrity and intensity which has almost disappeared from Hollywood, but it never lapses into melodrama.
Outstanding in the large supporting cast are Johanna Wokalek as Ilse, a rival with Aimée for Jaguar's love; and Detlev Buck as Aimée's husband, Günther, who manages to elicit our sympathy for his personal predicament, while repelling us with his Nazi arrogance and cloddishness.A notable feature of the movie is that it reminds us that, like London and Paris, wartime Berlin still had a thriving nightlife, with Beethoven concerts, well dressed women and officers drinking in luxury hotel lounges, and smart receptions.
These scenes give the film colour and style, features sometimes missing from movies set in time of war.This is one of those very rare movies in which not only every element - scenario, acting, camerawork, effects, interior and exterior locations, music etc - is almost perfect in itself, but in which they add up to a true work of art.
Jaguar, or Felice Schragenheim, is played by Maria Schrader, a painfully slender, winsome, enigmatic, and devastatingly beautiful actress whose character rolls through this story like a loose cannon.
She is well matched by Aimée, or Lilly Wust, played by Juliane Köhler, attractive but older, by turns lustful and distraught.To survive in difficult times, young Felice poses for nude photos, works in a newspaper office, and gives dance lessons.
She entertains single men while her children go to the zoo "again?" Felice conceives a passion for Lilly from afar and writes her a romantic letter, signed "Jaguar."I don't want to spoil the story, so I will say no more about it.
"Aimee and Jaguar" tells of the love which blossoms between two women, one married with four children and one a Jewess, in 1943/44 Berlin.
By night, she's Jaguar, the assertive, insurrectionist fighter for the German Resistence.The movie also does a great job of portraying lesbian love as just as valid and intimate as heterosexual love.
What sets this apart from your typical Jew/Nazi movie was that it was a love affair between a wife of a Nazi hero and a Jewish girl who does not wear a star and is an assistant to the newpaper editor of Berlins biggest paper.The courage and nerve these young kids had is breathtaking and the disaster that they befell at the hands of the Nazis devastated me more than most typical Nazi movies.
There is a line in the movie where one girl is telling another girl who is reprimanding her for something, "You did not create the world - God did." Wonderful way to say - you can't judge me.The love making scene is hard to watch.
Although I love the movie (I've seen it 4 times.), it's true that the book is better (as with any film based on a book), one is able to understand the depth and complexity of the relationship much more in Erica Fischer's book.
Maria Schrader's Felice is so right and so penetrating--think the scene where she tells the "girls" goodbye and walks away one of the most moving bits of acting ever.
however, what I saw touched me so deeply, both in the reality of the story as well as the reality of what life was like for many Jews, as well as Germans, during that time,1943, Battle of Berlin.This is a story of "Love", of "Courage" and of "History".
It is a story of a Jewish woman who is living in the time of war...of the Nazi repression and extermination of Jews (and others).
I rented this movie thinking it was a history lesson, but I soon find out that this was a true love story.
This movie was about these two people's time of falling in love, though it was a bit short for them.P.S. Hollywood don't make it like these anymore..
More than just a love story or a history film or a coming-out film, this movie combines the best aspects of all three genres.
Set in World War II Germany and it deals with a love affair of a Jewish underground lady with a wife of a German officer (not a Nazi officer as other summaries seem to suggest).
Set in World War II Germany and it deals with a love affair of a Jewish underground lady with a wife of a German officer (not a Nazi officer as other summaries seem to suggest).
Fascinating (And true!) story of two women that fall in love during WWII Berlin and how they try to maintain their love during that chaotic period.
This unconventional German film is set in battle-torn Berlin in the final months of World War II, as a Jewish lesbian woman falls in love with the wife of a Nazi officer.
It is a very sad movie but at the same time a beautiful love story and also the story of a woman overcoming her fears and freeing herself.
i was very doubtful whether this would be another of those "let's get over it" movies of our neighbours, but was positively surprised when i finally got to watch it.the characters are played absolutely convincing and compelling, the plot is both thrilling and deriving compassion for this misfortunate true love story enfolding in the berlin of world war II.both juliane koehler and maria schrader are at their best, showing all aspects of the love story (jewish - aryan; lesbian vs.
"straight", danger-passion) in a way, which takes the viewer into a different world, forgetting his now and here, diving in into this nazi-era, full of war, destruction, yet again lust of living life to the fullest and enjoying every day of survival.all in all, a movie to be recommended highly to anyone really, who likes to forget his world for a few hours and see a women's love story that endures war and holocaust.GREAT!.
This time, however, it's different: "Aimée und Jaguar", a tender and subtle love story between two women, is at the same time a realistic and thought-provoking reconstruction of what it was like to live in Berlin during World War II.
Maybe all the painfully bad and boring German movies that try to copy Hollywood are the price we have to pay for occasional gems like "Aimée und Jaguar".
But the two doomed lovers never really seem truly passionate, nor is there any sense of danger and terror all around.Maybe this story would have worked better if it had been set in the Weimar Republic instead of Nazi Germany.
Brilliant German war love story.
The German movie "Aimee & Jaguar" is a real love story between two very different women in the Berlin of the early fourties during the Third Reich dictatorship.
Unfortunately Jaguar is Jewish, and the Nazi and war terror of that years devided the love of these two women.
Jaguar was somewhere killed during the Holocaust, while Aimee is still alive and is living now in a senior's home in a Berlin suburb.That's the real story and the plot of the film, and it's brilliantly shot, edited and casted.
AIMEE & JAGUAR tells the tragic story of a doomed love affair between a Jewish lesbian and the wife of an SS officer.
Highly recommended to those who like WWII movies, particularly dealing with unorthodox/uncommon subjects, and anyone who likes a good love story..
It tells the story about a 30-year-old housewife and singer named Lilly who lives in Berlin, Germany with her daughter, three sons and husband whom is fighting for his country in World War II, whom is having an affair with an SS-Officer named Ernst and who through her friend named Ilse meets an audacious woman named Felice.
Distinctly and engagingly directed by German filmmaker Max Färberböch, this finely paced and somewhat fictional tale which is narrated by one of the main characters and mostly from the two main characters' viewpoints, draws an increasingly dramatic portrayal of a German wife and mother of four who falls in love with a 21-year-old Jewish resistance fighter who works part-time as a model with her three girlfriends named Klara, Lotte and Ilse and for a newspaper.
This historic, at times charmingly humorous, conversational and prominently romantic drama triangle from the late 1990s which is set in the capital city of the Germany in the 1940s and 1990s and where a woman's infatuation with her friend turns into jealously after she introduces her to another woman whom her friend finds so interesting that she decides to write an anonymous love letter to, is impelled and reinforced by its cogent narrative structure, substantial character development, subtle continuity, distinctly natural reactions by Juliane Köhler, scenes between Lilly and Felice, comment by Felice : "Say whatever you like.
"Aimee and Jaguar" depicts a Lesbian Jew living in WW II Germany who falls in love with an ostensibly straight Nazi.
An example: the scene where Lilly, the German Nazi, and Felice, the Jewish Lesbian, first make love.
Lilly meets one of her lovers while wearing stockings and wool socks and a sloppy slip – but the movie makes the point that even homeless Jewish Lesbians can look soignee in wartime Berlin.
Set in Berlin during what appear to be the latter years of World War II, this movie follows the developing relationship between two women.
Maria Schrader played Felice (Jaguar) a young Jewish woman who's also a lesbian, who meets up with Lilly Wust (or Aimee, played by Juliane Kohler) who's married to a German officer (and who's having an affair with another German officer.) The story of their relationship as it develops from cautious friendship into a full blown love affair is told in a non- sensationalistic way, and it manages to offer a glimpse of what life in Berlin might have been like during those desperate years.What I really liked about this movie was the fact that it avoided the opportunity to be exploitative on at least two fronts - both the Holocaust and lesbianism were simply a part of the story, but they weren't THE story.
Both Aimee and Jaguar (as Lilly and Felice nicknamed themselves) come across as people struggling - as Berliners were in those days - to survive the madness of Nazi Germany.
To be honest, I wasn't sure that the movie needed to include those bookends - the story could have been told well enough without them.This is intriguing because it's a true story; Lilly Wust herself apparently vouched for its accuracy, and because it's different than most of the "set in Nazi Germany" stories you come across.
It is a story about love in a time of war, with the complication that it is lesbian love and 'Jaguar' in the film is a Jewish woman, passing herself off as Aryan and surviving by being a secretary for the editor of a Nazi Newspaper, and keeping close to officers in the military.The acting by the two lead women is quite exceptional, capturing the great contrast between their personalities and revealing a relationship that is entirely believable.The sets, scenes and costumes are authentic and create the era really well; the camera work is excellent.
This film took home a basket full of German awards and a Golden Globe and GLAAD nomination.A beautiful, and true, story of a Jewish lesbian (Felice/Jaguar (Maria Schrader) who is attracted to an officer's wife (Lilly/Aimee (Juliane Kohler - Downfall, Adam Resurrected, A Woman in Berlin).Of course, things don't go smoothly at first, as Lilly is not aware that Felice and her friends are lesbians.
She slaps her the first time they kiss.Lilly finally accepts the fact that she loves Felice and there is a beautiful and transformative love scene.Both Schrader and Kohler were amazing.
They have assumed the role of survivor in this memoir of Lilly's, aka Aimee, obsession of her love for Felice Schragenheim, a queer Jewess in Berlin in the Third Reich.
Then I realized it is the story of Lilly's lover and her memory of Felice's greatness and her charm that we are seeing.
It ends not long after the attempt to assassinate Hitler in July 1944.The doomed lovers are Felice Schragenheim and Lilly Wust; Jaguar and Aimee were their pet names for one another.
The story is framed by a present day encounter between Lily and Ilse in a Berlin old-age home, in which Felice's two former lovers come to terms with each other.
Fifty years on, Felice is still the one and only love of Lily's life.
We then flash back to the war years where we meet Lilly Wust, married with four children, with a German soldier husband who occasionally comes home from the front.
Most of the conflict within the relationship is primarily centered on Lilly's confusion about her sexuality, self-worth and decision to involve herself with Felice whose sensitive side is repressed due to her constant fear of being arrested by the Nazis.While the relationship between the two lovers is at times compelling, it also becomes a little tiresome due to the fact that it's unnecessarily drawn out."Aimee and Jaguar" is also a subtle Holocaust-related story, focusing on how ordinary German civilians reacted during the Nazi horror.
Yes, this film is probably one of the best love stories out there.
I will give the makers of the movie the benefit of the doubt that they were probably working on a small budget and there may have been restrictions with filming in certain places at the time.------ The first half of the movie seems to be all over the place, with no real chronological series of events (the book is chronological, but wavers between the Nazi threat and the love between 2 women).
It is a great subject, with only "Bent" being the other well known movie (off the top of my head) about homosexuality and Nazi persecution.----- I do give a nod to the director for the pond scene near the end and the capture the same day of Felicity, which is not only noted in the book, but the re-creation is very well done.
"Aimée & Jaguar" is a German movie from over 15 years ago about two women, one of them a Jew, having a relationship during the years of World War II.
What also certainly did not help was that none of the characters were particularly likable.All in all, I cannot recommend this movie unless you are really really interested in German films set during war time or Lesbian movies.
("Aimée" was Felice's pet name for Lilly and "Jaguar" Lilly's for Felice).Felice, who worked as a journalist on a Nazi newspaper, may also have seemed like the ideal German woman, but again she was not everything she seemed.