Anti-fascist cinema: Aimée & Jaguar (1999)
Erotic melodrama both enlivens and distracts from the depiction of women in the anti-Nazi resistance in Germany during WWII
Aimée & Jaguar (1999)
Directed by Max Färberböck
All biopics and historical dramas are dubious, because 1) memories are faulty, and 2) every screenwriter shapes the real events to fulfill the demands of drama. This is simply common practice, even when the real-life events have been carefully documented and a ton of proof exists to support an account of them; even in such well-documented stories, the characters and events are changed at least a little so that the movie is dramatically whole and satisfying.
I’ve discussed these principles before, in my “Bonhoeffer” review last year, among other essays. A good example is the movie “A Complete Unknown,” in which the real woman who appeared on the cover of Bob Dylan’s first album, walking with him down a snowy West Village street — her name is Suze Rotolo and she was in fact Dylan’s girlfriend — is changed into a fictional character called Sylvie, because Dylan, who consulted on the movie’s script, suggested it to the filmmakers. Whether this was done to protect the still-living Suze Rotolo’s privacy, or to erase her memory, is not known.
But the story in “Aimée & Jaguar” is not well-documented. It is based on a 1994 book titled “Aimée & Jaguar: A Love Story, Berlin 1943,” which told the “true story” of a cell of German lesbians living in Berlin who risked their lives to forge documents to attempt to save some people from arrest and murder. Author Erica Fischer based her book on written notes and interviews with Lili Wust, aka Aimée. Given that Wust waited more than 40 years after the war to remember it all, the chain of custody of these memories is somewhat loose.
That’s not to mock or undermine the story told in the film, nor to dispute the experience of many viewers who love the movie because of its depiction of erotic love between the title characters. It’s really up to the viewer to decide — as one does with any representation in cinema of historical characters — whether the filmmakers have imbued the film with enough credibility that the exact facts might not matter as much as the message of resistance and love that the movie contains.
I’m certainly in no position to judge. I don’t know anything about the German anti-Nazi resistance, except that they bombed Hitler and failed, and that theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, perhaps the best-remembered figure in the resistance, was somehow involved. Also there was that Oskar Schindler character, and many others, doubtless including women.
I would have liked for the movie to depict more details of the actual resistance work the characters were doing. The film contains little cloak and dagger or derring-do, instead focusing on the relations between the several women who were members of the cell, including the love affair of the two title characters. So for those hoping to learn much about how you operate a resistance cell under the noses of the regime’s police and military, the movie will fall short.
Where it doesn’t fall short is in the erotic department. The affair between the two title characters, Wust (Juliane Köhler) and her Jewish lover Felice (Maria Shrader) — depicted as the group’s most daring member — is front and center, and lovingly and sentimentally presented. Its romantic portrayal is why the film is close to the heart of many a lesbian movie fan; to this day, for some people there’s nothing more erotically bracing than a woman with closely cropped hair wearing a tuxedo and top hat seducing a curly-haired femme. And the fashions of the 1930s and 40s are so gorgeous.
Of interest is an actress named Heike Makatsch, who appeared in “Love Actually” as the secretary who seduces the Alan Rickman character. Yes, the woman who slumps in her office chair and provocatively parts her knees. Here she has much more than that to do, even as a supporting character, and is also probably the most glamorously made up and attired actress in the movie. Despite her exposure in that runaway British comedy hit, Makatsch didn’t go on to make it big in English-language cinema, probably because her home-wrecker character was the most odious one in “Love Actually.”
I guess the message of “Aimée & Jaguar” is that you can be a spy in the house of the devil and look plenty glamorous doing it. Could this be why people fostered the myth that Melania Trump was a secret member of the resistance, that her scowling expression whenever she had to appear in public with her husband was somehow sending a message, either “I cannot stand this creep” or “Help me?” That myth always seemed suspect; it conveniently supplied Mrs. Trump with an alibi while it painted her as a victim and not one of the perpetrators, albeit one of the most pained and incompetent (and that’s saying a lot).
Some people needed to believe the “Free Melania!” myth. Some need to believe in the concept of the “Good German,” which I discussed at length in essay on “The Lives of Others,” a movie about a Stasi officer who become sympathetic to a playwright who is the target of his surveillance because the writer plays the piano beautifully. In the same way, some people needed to believe that the writer of "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration," as well as others working for Trump during his first term in office, were at the same time protecting the world against Trump’s worst impulses. And many hoped for a salvific “Mueller Time,” when a report by the former FBI director and Trump-appointed special counsel would once and for all publish incontrovertible evidence of the president’s crimes (it didn’t).
The appeal of such fantasies is obvious. We want to believe that powerful figures within the system will use their power and influence to control and redeem a frightening and out-of-control situation. We want to believe that cinematic actions like bombing (as in “How to Blow Up a Pipeline,” in which environmental activists do just that) or assassination can make a difference and are worth the danger and destruction.
These are not real options. And hoping that someone will do them (“It’s Mueller Time!”), instead of doing something yourself, is at best a waste of your time, and at worst robs you of your agency as it deprives your community from benefitting from the positive things that you could be doing.
What do you hope for now?
If you await a time when Trump, whether through death, or resignation, or by being declared incompetent under the 25th Amendment, stops being president, you’d have to believe that J.D. Vance — one of the least qualified Vice Presidents in 100 years — would be better. If you believe that any Republicans currently in Congress might vote for impeachment, go ahead and count the votes, and remember you need two-thirds of the voting US senators. If you hope for a civil war (a la the movie “Civil War”) — that ain’t going to happen either.
And if you believe that acts of violence from individuals or groups will somehow topple the regime, that’s the worst fantasy of all. Such an act only brings us closer to a real police state, and you can bet that people like Tom Homan and Stephen Miller and the dog-shooting lady Kristi Noem are itching for that to happen.
I believe that there is hope today. The people of the U.S. can prevent the country from sliding into dictatorship — but only if we simultaneously do three things: learn and practice nonviolent sabotage; confront the criminals in public and in large numbers; and protect each other while we do it. Our strength is in numbers — and in demonstrating and confronting criminals in the light of day.
Brilliant review, Mark.