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Based on a true story, Max Färberböck's adaptation of Erica Fischer's book unfolds like a lesbian Casablanca, forming a near-conventional World War Two melodrama about an unconventional relationship.
It's Berlin, 1943, and Lilly Wust (Juliane Köhler) could be an Aryan poster wife, infidelities aside, until she meets the vivacious and Jewish Felice (Maria Schrader), who works for a Nazi newspaper but parties with a gaggle of lesbian sophisticates and moonlights for the Jewish underground.
Romance follows, but Färberböck's vivid realisation of wartime Berlin is a reminder of how doubly doomed - Jewish and lesbian - this live-for-the-now love is. Subtly played by the two leads, it's a persuasive piece of history.
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