Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Set in Berlin during what appear to be the latter years of World War II, this movie follows the developing relationship between two women. Maria Schrader played Felice (Jaguar) a young Jewish woman who's also a lesbian, who meets up with Lilly Wust (or Aimee, played by Juliane Kohler) who's married to a German officer (and who's having an affair with another German officer.) The story of their relationship as it develops from cautious friendship into a full blown love affair is told in a non- sensationalistic way, and it manages to offer a glimpse of what life in Berlin might have been like during those desperate years.What I really liked about this movie was the fact that it avoided the opportunity to be exploitative on at least two fronts - both the Holocaust and lesbianism were simply a part of the story, but they weren't THE story. The story was about the relationship between the two, and seemed to focus far more on the emotional side of that relationship than on the sexual side. There's a minimal amount of nudity, but very little overt sexuality, so anyone looking for a soft-porn type of lesbian movie should look elsewhere. Both Aimee and Jaguar (as Lilly and Felice nicknamed themselves) come across as people struggling - as Berliners were in those days - to survive the madness of Nazi Germany. So it's a story of survival and perseverance; there's also a bit of a journey of self-discovery involved. The movie is told as a flashback. The movie opens with a reunion between Lily and her former maid Ilse (who was a part of the lesbian circle Felice was involved in) in the 1990's. The ending of the movie goes back to the "modern" conversation between Lilly and Ilse. To be honest, I wasn't sure that the movie needed to include those bookends - the story could have been told well enough without them.This is intriguing because it's a true story; Lilly Wust herself apparently vouched for its accuracy, and because it's different than most of the "set in Nazi Germany" stories you come across. Subtitles don't really appeal to me all that much, but the story is easy enough to follow, and hearing the original German you really do get a sense of the emotions of the characters as the story progresses. (7/10)

This film took home a basket full of German awards and a Golden Globe and GLAAD nomination.A beautiful, and true, story of a Jewish lesbian (Felice/Jaguar (Maria Schrader) who is attracted to an officer's wife (Lilly/Aimee (Juliane Kohler - Downfall, Adam Resurrected, A Woman in Berlin).Of course, things don't go smoothly at first, as Lilly is not aware that Felice and her friends are lesbians. She slaps her the first time they kiss.Lilly finally accepts the fact that she loves Felice and there is a beautiful and transformative love scene.Both Schrader and Kohler were amazing. An outstanding film of love amidst the most terrible times.

Aimee und Jaguar is a German lesbian Liebestod soap opera in the Tristan und Isolde mode, set in wartime Berlin, with background music supplied by RAF Bomber Command and the Gestapo. It is ostensibly a true story, based on the memoir of the surviving lover, who lived on in Berlin for another 50 years. The story starts in November 1943, at the beginning of the British air campaign to obliterate Berlin. It ends not long after the attempt to assassinate Hitler in July 1944.The doomed lovers are Felice Schragenheim and Lilly Wust; Jaguar and Aimee were their pet names for one another. Dark haired, intense Felice is a Jew. She's living on forged Aryan papers that identify her as a Wehrmacht officer's widow and hiding in plain sight by working as a secretary for the editor in chief of a Nazi Party newspaper. She's also involved in some kind of resistance activity involving false documents. Just in case she doesn't have enough stress in her life, she's part of a coterie of lesbians, mostly but not all Jewish, whose idea of a good time seems to be to go to tea dances at the Hotel am Zoo, flirt aggressively with Wehrmacht officers on leave, and buy black market ration coupons in the ladies' room. Felice and her girlfriends also get a few laughs and pick up a few marks on the side by posing in cheesecake pinups for the photographer who works on the fake documents.Girls in the Bund Deutcher Mädel, the Nazi girl's organization, had to do a year's labor service on a farm or as a household servant. As the story gets under way, Felice's current girlfriend, Ilse, is doing her "domestic year" as babysitter for Lily Wust. The blonde, not quite bovine Lily could be Mrs. Aryan of 1943. Her husband Gunter is a platoon sergeant on the Russian front, she has four sons, for which achievement she has been awarded the Deutches Mutterkreuz medal in bronze, she blames the Jews for the air raids, and she claims to be able to smell a Jew. Lily is unhappily married to a lower middle class regular guy who thinks of her as the little woman. She's none too bright and believes whatever she's told. She's also a hopeless romantic who looks for but does not find the love of her life in a succession of quickie affairs with Army officers. (Her kids are getting tired of Ilse shlepping them to the zoo during the afternoons.) Her husband is apparently cheating on her as well when he's home on leave. Felice apparently needs more excitement than her commonplace life is providing. She thinks it would be droll for a Jewish woman to seduce this slightly overripe Hausfrau and fulfill her romantic dreams. Nothing will do but that Ilse contrive an introduction. Ilse, though jealous, does so, and Felice gives Lily her personality at full blast, coming on to her in a series of torrid love letters signed "Jaguar." Lily, who hasn't got the first clue, eats it up. She loves her new social life and all her new friends; they discreetly find her amusing. She falls hopelessly in love with Felice, who of course falls hopelessly in love with her. On New Year's Day 1944 they fall tremblingly into bed together. The marriage breaks up, Felice moves in, the boys think she's great, and even Lily's parents accept her. The discarded husband eventually dies somewhere in Russia, missed by no one.Everybody would be deliriously happy except for a few minor problems. The Royal Air Force keeps trying to kill them all every night. The Gestapo keeps checking papers in the street and rounding up the remaining Jews in Berlin, including Felice's family. Felice's Nazi boss, who thinks she's the world's greatest secretary, keeps asking sympathetic personal questions that have highly inconvenient answers. Felice almost blows her cover at the office when she can't quite show the proper shock and horror at the July 1944 attempt to assassinate Hitler. Meanwhile, the bright young SS-Untersturmfuhrer who rounded up the rest of her family has made finding Felice his personal project. Felice's friends in the underground are about to flee to Switzerland, and they offer to get her out with them. Knowing what's at stake, Felice turns them down to stay with Lily. She finally confesses to her astonished lover that she is Jewish. Lily, by this time, is so besotted with love that she wouldn't care if Felice were a Martian with two heads. Of course it all ends badly. One summer day, as Felice and Lily return from an idyllic picnic in the woods, the Gestapo are waiting at the apartment to wrap up this loose end. Felice is taken away to Theresienstadt, and we see no more of her. We learn that Lily, who truly doesn't have a clue, actually tried to visit her in the concentration camp; the attempt probably did Felice no good. That's pretty much it. The story is framed by a present day encounter between Lily and Ilse in a Berlin old-age home, in which Felice's two former lovers come to terms with each other. Fifty years on, Felice is still the one and only love of Lily's life. This is emphatically lower middlebrow entertainment, applying every cliché known to man (and woman) to earnest but melodramatic period romantic costume drama. The plot would make a pretty good libretto for a real opera. It's great fun, and I ate it up.

In Berlin, along the Second World War, Felice Schragenheim (Maria Schrader) is a bright Jewish lesbian working in a Nazi newspaper under a false identity and being member of a resistance organization. Lilly Wust (Juliane Köhler) is a woman married with the soldier Günther Wust (Detlev Buck), who is fighting in the German front. Lilly is mother of four children and has never found love, being unfaithful to her husband. Felice meets Lilly and they fall in love for each other, adopting the nickname of Jaguar (Felice) and Aimée (Lilly), jeopardizing the safety of Felicia. This true unconventional and sensitive love story, in a sad period of German history, is a wonderful movie. The reconstitution of the Berlin in the war period is amazing. The performance of the cast is stunning, and the direction is outstanding. Although dealing with lesbian love, this powerful, unforgettable and touching romance is one of the most beautiful film I have recently seen. My vote is nine.Title (Brazil): 'Aimée & Jaguar'