Färberböck thought at first that this material was not for him, but for someone like the late Rainer Werner Fassbinder. But these are real people in a real world of war and hatred-in short, the bomb-ravaged Berlin of 19, a madhouse of men and women living recklessly for the moment, most of all Lilly and Felice. Lilly is willing to give up her husband and children in a divorce action so that she can live out the rest of her life with Felice. They write passionate letters to each other, and Felice even writes a poem to celebrate her undying love for Lilly. Lilly and Felice give each other the pet names of Aimée and Jaguar, respectively, almost at the beginning of their relationship.

Lilly Wust (Juliane Köhler), a German officer’s wife, mother of four boys and casual, pro-Hitler anti-Semite, becomes enraptured by Felice Schragenheim (Maria Schrader), a covertly Jewish member of the underground and a promiscuous lesbian in her spare time away from her job as the editorial assistant of a pro-Nazi publisher. Färberböck and Rona Munro, based on the book by Erica Fischer, deals with a taboo-smashing wartime love affair between two women of contrasting backgrounds and temperaments. (Dec.Max Färberböck’s Aimée & Jaguar, from a screenplay by Mr. Tumbling into obscurity in the postwar years, Elisabeth hangs on to her love for the lost Felice, and all that spent passion comes across as simply obsession. The diary entries of Elisabeth reflect the unreflective, self-centered musings of a hausfrau that are in their own way as revealing of the Gotterdammerung of Nazi Germany as any report by a minister of state. Her husband, a Nazi officer, was swallowed up on the eastern front while Aimee dallied with every Heinz, Dick and Harry who crossed her threshold, as well as women lovers. For instance, 80-year-old Elisabeth Wust (Aimee) swears in interviews with the dubious Fischer that she didn't now what the Nazis were doing to the Jews, yet the instant Soviet troops tramped into Berlin, she passed off herself and her four kids as Jewish. Fischer, a Viennese feminist and journalist, pieces together diaries, interviews, reminiscences-sometimes self-serving in the extreme on the part of their authors. Our sympathy is tapped because one of the lovers, Felice Schragenheim (Jaguar), is a U-boat-a Jew living underground.

It purports to be a tender wartime memoir of two Berlin lesbian lovers, one of whom turns out to be perhaps the most ordinary woman in Nazi Germany. This book doesn't seem to realize it is less about lesbianism and love than it is a jolting social history-achtung.

Aimée & jaguar a love story berlin 1943