'Lore' (15)

 

***/**** (3.5 stars)

DVD Release

At the end of the Second World War, Lore’s parents are arrested. Left with instructions to lead her younger siblings to their grandmother’s home many miles away, the young woman begins a journey across war-torn Germany, encountering people and situations she never expected to experience. En route, the young family come across a strange refugee who makes them question everything they have been taught.

This is a deeply unsettling and eerie film – a feeling of dread and unease hangs over it from the very beginning, and it was impossible to relax when watching the drama unfurl. The camera lingers on deeply provocative images, such as the body of a raped and murdered woman and a dead man slumped in chair after committing suicide. In between the moments of human interaction, there are shots of Germany, large expanses of unpopulated countryside scattered with farmsteads and abandoned tanks, along with numerous images of trees seen from beneath. At times it feels as though we are watching an art installation from an overly angst-ridden Art student, but this is a slow and searching film as opposed to one that provides the viewer with definite answers. These elongated frames of the wilderness are unsettling, but this seems to rather be the point as this is the landscape as Lore sees it – she is alone with her four younger siblings and the ideology she has been raised on is crumbling around her.

Whilst on the journey to their grandmother’s house, the family are joined by Thomas, a young man liberated from the Camps. His presence within the group causes Lore to rethink what her parents have taught her, as she and her siblings come to depend on his skills and strength. The relationship between Lore (Saskia Rosendahl) and Thomas (Kai Malina) is deeply sensual, their fleeting moments of intimacy handled with great tenderness by director Cate Shortland. The sexual tension between the two is enticing, almost arousing, and the two young leads handle the relationship excellently.

The film is at times somewhat frustrating in its episodic nature – the family are on a journey, and therefore never linger long in one particular place, meaning that meetings with other characters are only fleeting. In this sense, it raises more questions than it answers and the motives of some characters are never fully understood. The film feels as though it is building up to one particular climatic moment, but this is never fully realised – the group merely move on from one situation to another and the film focuses more on what is left unsaid, leaving the ambiguous imagery to linger long in the mind of the viewer.

Some viewers will doubtless be frustrated at the slow pace of the film and indeed the lack of speech and declared emotion, but if you allow yourself to be immersed in the eerie shots of the landscape and of people’s faces, then you’ll uncover a rather haunting and personal war story.