Aimee & Jaguar

Aimee & Jaguar

Felice is both Jewish and gay. This means that she has a suspended death sentence just by walking around in Berlin in the year 1943. She takes enormous risks: works for an underground resistance group, spends her days as the assistant to the editor of a Nazi newspaper (“What would I do without you?” he asks), hides in plain view; her boldness is her weapon. Then she falls in love with Lilly.

Lilly (Juliane Kohler) has four children; her husband is fighting at the front. The first time we see her, she is at a Beethoven concert with a German officer not her husband. She cheats. He cheats, even with their nanny it’s wartime. One night Lilly gets swept away from a club by Felice (Maria Schrader) and friends; she doesn’t realize they are lesbians at first, not until finally told Felice is Jewish.

Who would suspect that of an employee of the Nazis? “Aimee & Jaguar” (Lilly and Felice’s pet names for each other) is based on true story; Lilly Wust who is alive today at 85, and who inspired book film was made from about her.

Felice most likely died in concentration camps; Lilly tried to visit her there which caused attention being brought down upon them when she should have known better, when it was hopeless anyway. War calls for desperate love affairs but theirs was so dangerous it was like an act of defiance against all the laws, the state, the world set against them.

It is pretty evident that Germany is losing this war; the end cannot be far off now: bombs rain down on Berlin where also through underground sources better even than him knowledges German defeats already shared by Felice’s editorship boss himself whom Felice works under but these were hidden Jews who knew how to become invisible or escape identification altogether may still survive somewhere in half shadow.

At the beginning of the film a German woman in a restroom sells food stamps to women she knows (or assumes) are Jewish; later we will see other Germans aware of Felice’s secret but not telling anyone about it they support genocide state with their silence yet refuse take any personal risks themselves; even a subtle scene suggests that editor realizes what Felice really is and chooses not to know her.

For Lilly, love with Felice is an eye-opener. At first she doesn’t even realize that her new friend is gay until Felice kisses her when this happens, lilly reacts with horror but then on second thoughts isn’t horrified at all and soon afterwards they become lovers.

There’s a sex scene in the movie, not graphic visually but intense emotionally which truthful I have seen before most of lovers depicted onscreen being too much control over each other so as actors playing those roles fearing embarrassment if they lose control during filming since climaxing can look comical even silly for someone who’s observing from outside thus making few Hollywood stars willing pretend well enough how an orgasm feels like.

When Lilly and felic have sex together everything changes around them because there’s trembling mixed up fear losing power through bodies still shaking which remains present all subsequent scenes.

Maria Schrader plays the role of Felice with such an air of fatality that she must know her days are limited. She can’t perpetrate her deceit for long, and when they catch her, she won’t be just any Jew; she will have infiltrated the heart of the Nazi establishment partied with her condemners. At first, she’s drawn to Lilly as a lark; it would be fun to take this officer’s wife, this mother of four little Aryans and break her. Then they fall in love.

There’s a moment in the movie when it seems like the nightmare might end. Word comes that Hitler is dead, after some officers tried and failed to kill him with a bomb. Nobody knows how to behave exactly; Felice is too careful to show what she feels inside, but among Berliners generally there is this unexpressed sense that anyway the war was lost and might as well be over.

Then Hitler goes on the radio saying he’s fine, and for Felice his voice is a death sentence: she won’t get another pass now, she knows it. “I’m Jewish, Lilly,” she tells her lover. Looking surprised at first Lilly then asks: “How can you love me?” This scene is crucial.

“Aimee & Jaguar” has holes in its telling that raise questions: How can Lilly’s husband return from fighting whenever he wants? Was Felice hired by the newspaper without any personal records? These questions don’t matter much.

What does matter is that at one point in her life Felice gets a chance to leave Germany; stays behind instead. Maybe there was no choice involved here; it’s one of those stories which have got to be true because if they were made up nobody would believe them for an instant.

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