In Germany, almost 12 months after the fall of the Berlin Wall and 45 years since the nation was first carved in two, a disguised Katrine (Juliane Köhler, A Quiet Life) scours through her shrouded past. Her journey starts weeks earlier, when her life in Norway is interrupted by a lawyer (Ken Duken, My Last Day Without You) looking to bring closure and compensation to children mistreated by the Nazis. Taken at birth from her Norwegian mother on account of her German soldier father, Katrine appears to be a victim; alas, in a story spanning decades, the truth of her circumstances proves far from straightforward.
With the duality of Two Lives (Zwei Leben) indicated in its title, a permeating sense of unease infiltrates the film from the outset, building as events traverse a series of twists and turns. Yet writer/director Georg Maas (documentary The Buddha Wallah) and co-scribes Christoph Tölle (New Found Land), Ståle Stein Berg (Kissed by Winter) and Judith Kaufmann (Unveiled) enjoy the gift of time in teasing out the details of the tense thriller, as adapted from the novel Eiszeiten by Hannelore Hippe.
Katrine is immediately revealed as a woman divided, her secretive efforts placed in stark contrast with her loving home life with husband Bjarte (Sven Nordin, An Enemy to Die For), mother Ase (Liv Ullman, Through a Glass, Darkly), daughter Anne (Julia Bache-Wiig, Turn Me On, Goddammit!) and infant granddaughter. In a tale fuelled by war-sanctioned espionage, her precarious situation is slowly revealed in parallel with the issues of identity and acceptance that plagued Germany in its reunification; her struggle between duty and desire, though presented as an intimate family story, reflect the state of the fractured country trying to reform.
A nuanced performance from Köhler embodies the fragility of the chasm between the past and present, whilst acting stalwart Ullman heightens the film’s gravitas in small but influential doses. The many machinations of the plot may force both women’s characters into the service of the narrative, but each handles the developments with delicacy, never wavering in their emotion even as the feature escalates in its obviousness.
Although less astute, Two Lives sits comfortably beside Christian Petzold’s recent award-winner Barbara as an arresting exploration of the dangerous politics of Germany’s history. The topic is likely to grace screens with increasing frequency in the years to come, ideally in productions as probing, polished and intriguing.
Rating: 3 ½ stars out of 5
Two Lives (Zwei Leben)
Director: Georg Maas
Germany/Norway, 2012, 97 min
Unrated
Sydney: 30 March – 14 May
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