It is reminiscent of Suite Française – though not quite as glib as that other prestigious period production about postwar love and guilt, The Reader. But, even if it did look plausible, there is something too easy in the way the horrors and guilt of the second world war are slathered in this tragi-romantic syrup. The pair’s first kiss is lacking in the despairing passion that it is supposed to radiate.
The emotional flashpoints of this secret love are frankly forced and unconvincing. And these lonely souls are drawn together. And so, with an awful inevitability, Lewis is away all day neglecting his wife’s emotional needs, and leaving her to brood over the beautiful Steinway in the house. In theory, Stefan and Freda should be packed off to a camp, but Lewis has the grace to be embarrassed about this, and allows Stefan and Freda to live in the attic, with Stefan permitted to do humble work in the garden. The Morgans have the right to requisition un-bombed German houses as their living quarters and they are assigned the beautiful home of Stefan Lubert (Skarsgård), sensitive architect, widower and non-party-member and his difficult teenage daughter Freda (Flora Thiemann). With him, Lewis has brought his beautiful, emotionally brittle wife Rachel (Knightley) who is trying her best to confront the secret pain in their marriage, about which Lewis is in denial. He is there to administer the postwar settlement, to keep order among the fractious civilian population – traumatised by the devastating British bombing – and to supervise the “denazification” process, the purpose of which is to root out unrepentant Hitlerites. The year is 1946 and Colonel Lewis Morgan (Clarke) is part of the British military posting in Hamburg, a decent man but emotionally cold.
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