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Aimée & Jaguar

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Aimée & Jaguar
Movie poster
Directed byMax Färberböck
Written byMax Färberböck
Erica Fischer (book)
Rona Munro
Produced byHanno Huth
Günter Rohrbach
Lew Rywin
StarringMaria Schrader
Juliane Köhler
CinematographyTony Imi
Edited byBarbara Hennings
Music byJan A. P. Kaczmarek
Distributed bySenator Film
Release date
February 10 1999
Running time
125 mins
CountryGermany
LanguageGerman

Aimée & Jaguar is a 1999 German war and drama film set during World War II. It was written and directed by Max Färberböck, based upon Erica Fischer's book, chronicling the actual lives of Lilly Wust and Felice Schragenheim during that time period. The book also contains photos of the many letters shared between the two, and official correspondences post WWII with regards to Felice's whereabouts. It stars Maria Schrader, Juliane Köhler, Johanna Wokalek, Elisabeth Degen, Heike Makatsch, Detlev Buck.

Plot

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 husband (a German soldier). Felice takes the initiative in the love affair. Lilly, fascinated with the strength of Felice and her friends, falls deeply in love because she realizes that she can give love with a cosmopolitan woman rather than merely receive love from a man. The film features both sensual erotic encounters and sentimental love poems (quoted from the book), and during one love scene a poetic line emerges in which Lilly is an Aimée to Felice as Jaguar. Then one day Lilly’s husband gets leave from the front and arrives home, only to see Felice and Lilly in bed. Although he then hoped merely to punish her for her indiscretion so that his marriage would return to normal, Lilly surprises him by asking for a divorce. He later dies at the front. Felice and her friends stop seeing Lilly for the sake of her own survival. On one occasion, Lilly erupts in anger over Felice’s unexplained absence for days, so Felice shares her secret that she is Jewish. After the July 20 Plot Lilly’s friends fear for their lives and arrange to flee Germany before they are rounded up. Felice prefers to take her chances in order to enjoy the love of her life, though unfortunately not for long, as Felice is captured by the gestapo. She died during a march from Gross-Rosen concentration camp in Poland to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany.

The story has two bookends. When the film begins in 1997, an 83-year-old Lilly (then played by Inge Keller) is taking up residence in a dilapidated flat that once served as an underground hideout. Lilly’s German maid Ilse (played by Johanna Wokalek in the 1940s, by Kyra Mladeck in 1997), who was rounded up during 1945, is already a tenant. Lilly and Ilse reminisce 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 mood, common among besieged Berliners. Lilly Wust lived in Berlin till the day of her death on 31st March 2006. The tagline of the film, "Love Transcends Death," underscores how the book and film serve as sentimental memorials to Felice Schragenheim. However, the life of Lilly Wust is a paradigm of sorts for contemporary Germany.

The movie was nominated and won many German awards (both Köler and Schrader notably won the best actress Silver Bear) and also was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Film.

Cast

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