Okay, so from the moment I watched this trailer, I had to get my hands on this film and now, I finally have.
First of all, the second half is far better than the first half. The first half seems almost cheesy and unrealistic, with stilted dialogue but the second half, while far grimmer, is actually better with a tense feeling constantly clinging in the air.
Leyna (Amandla Steinberg) should not exist in Hitler's Germany. Though her mother claims Leyna was conceived in love, Leyna's father is long gone, never mentioned if he was killed fighting for France or if he was forced to return home. Leyna's younger brother, Koen's (Tom Sweet's) parentage is never mentioned.
Her love interest is the complete opposite and falling in love with her goes against everything he stands for. Lutz (George MacKay) is an active member in the Hitler youth and is training to be a soldier, and can't wait to go to the front line to nobly serve his country, just as his father did before him. However, his father has different plans for him.
While it is served up as romantic teenage love story, it is actually far more of love story between parents and children. Kersten (Abbie Cornish) makes countless sacrifices for Leyna to just stay alive, having her brother-in-law forge papers which testify to Leyna's sterilization, which makes her action halfway through the film very problematic, and when an SS soldier takes a dislike to Leyna's skin color, Kersten insists on going to the workhouse instead, though it is only a matter of time before Leyna is sent to another work camp, where fortunately, she is put to work in the kitchen, not to be punished for the sins of her mother.
So, fine, Leyna and Lutz fall in love and sneak around, as their relationship is forbidden and almost get caught a few times and despite Kersten's warnings and not wanting to let Leyna out of her sight, Lutz nevertheless takes Leyna to his house, while his father is out of town and they rashly have coitus, without a condom.
And you know what happens in Hollywood films every time a couple has unprotected sex, that's right: pregnancy, though that word is never uttered throughout the whole film. I knew this from the moment Leyna vomits.
You never truly know if she's okay with the whole pregnancy thing, though she does mention that she is proof of what Hitler would hate most of all, a black German having a baby, though surely she also realizes how dangerous it is for her to be in a camp with little food or hygiene and disease spreading like wildfire and certainly she also partially in denial about the whole thing and I don't judge her for that.
Then Lutz returns. His father had him transferred from the front to the camp, so he will survive. Though never mentioned outright, his father (Christopher Eccelston) is basically a pacifistic and is only a Nazi to protect his family, though all his changes does no good when he learns that Lutz is in love with a Negro. Lutz saves Leyna from being killed and is horrified to learn what the conditions are truly like in the camp. His father has taught him a valuable lesson, that war is not something to glamorize or aspire to, there is no dignity in killing others.
Leyna doesn't tell him about the baby, he has to figure it out on his own. They nearly make the filthy latrines seem hot and he wants them to escape, completely disillusioned with his dream, but she knows that that will certainly be the death of them. Now, what we know is that they are close to liberation so Leyna's right, but Lutz has no way of knowing this.
In the end, Leyna is sent to be marched back while Lutz disagrees with this plan, not that he has any power. His father shoots him in the back but gets Leyna to a displaced person camp. His father knew that death was emminent for Lutz anyway and I knew that there was no way that both could survive the war, not even in a Hollywood film, but it was sad nevertheless.
Leyna, thank goodness, gets her happy ending. Finally able to actual be pregnant and have a chance to have a healthy baby, she reunites with her brother and mother. So, history has an odd way of repeating itself. For the majority of the film, she criticized her mother's choice when ironically enough, she makes the same choices herself.
Okay, plot rant over. Sure, I feel that Germany is still too pretty and safe in the first half of the film, as the film starts out in 1944, springtime. Surely even most devote Germans knew that the war was hopeless by this point and I also thought that all the Jews had already been rounded up but apparently not as that happens several times throughout the film. Despite history being my minor, one of us needs to do more research and maybe that person's me.
Fortunately, the performances are great. Steinberg and MacKay are two best actors of their generation and manage to sizzle on screen despite wanting to yell at them for so ridiculously stupid and Cornish and Eccelston give subtle layered performances, though their characters are not given center-stage.
I guess my takeaway from this whole thing is that I'm glad that Amma Asante tried her hand at a Holocaust romance, something which I've dreamed of doing in the past and she also exposes a seldom discussed portion, being black in Hitler's Germany and while the characters she creates are interesting, it is still missing something (perhaps more realism), which is a shame as these actors and performances deserve better. Yet, it managed to be better than I expected and ended differently than I hoped for, though I knew going in that one of them had to die. This is a vast improvement over A United Kingdom, though it isn't as good as Belle, but rather falls somewhere in the middle. But it is worth watching nevertheless. Grade: B
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