Directed by: Cate Shortland
Starring: Saskia Rosendahl, Kai-Peter Malina, Nele Trebs
The teenage daughter of Nazi parents leads her younger siblings on a journey across Germany in the weeks following Hitler's death.
With the allied forces approaching, Lore (Rosendahl), her younger sister, and her three young brothers, are abandoned by their Nazi party parents and forced to make the lengthy journey from southern Germany to Hamburg
where their grandmother awaits their arrival. With just a few of her mother's trinkets to barter for food, Lore reluctantly accepts the help of Thomas (Malina), a young Jewish man recently released from the Buchenwald camp. As her journey progresses, Lore is exposed to the truth and consequences of her parents' beliefs.
For much of the running time of Shortland's film I was frustrated by a central plot contrivance which I felt simply didn't ring true. Towards the end, however, we get a plot twist which makes us re-evaluate that frustration but it can't erase the niggling irritation experienced prior to that point. I won't reveal the twist here but I feel most viewers would enjoy 'Lore' more if they were aware of this revelation prior to viewing. Retrospectively I can say it's an impressive piece of work though I must confess to frowning during many scenes, due to being unaware of the full facts. The central performance from Rosendahl is fantastic. She's given little dialogue but brilliantly conveys, through her physical performance, the disappointment of learning everything her parents told her was a cruel lie .
Shortland's direction is equally impressive although I would have preferred the plot twist to be revealed visually rather than through a cheap piece of expository dialogue. We're seeing a lot of films helmed by female directors now and they're rarely dull. In fact, so impressed by this new generation am I that, when I see a film has a female director attached, I automatically become more interested. Are women better film-makers than their male counterparts? No, of course not. My theory is that it's much harder for a woman to get a film made and thus the cream rises to the top. I can't think of one female director I could describe as a hack. Shortland is also Australian, a race of people who seem to have a natural gift for film-making. The real standout of 'Lore' though is composer Max Richter who is quickly becoming the best of his generation. The score here ranks with his great work on 2011's '
Perfect Sense'. You may not be tempted to watch 'Lore' a second time but, if you're a music lover, you'll definitely want to hear Richter's score again.
7/10
7.1/10
For much of the running time of Shortland's film I was frustrated by a central plot contrivance which I felt simply didn't ring true. Towards the end, however, we get a plot twist which makes us re-evaluate that frustration but it can't erase the niggling irritation experienced prior to that point. I won't reveal the twist here but I feel most viewers would enjoy 'Lore' more if they were aware of this revelation prior to viewing. Retrospectively I can say it's an impressive piece of work though I must confess to frowning during many scenes, due to being unaware of the full facts. The central performance from Rosendahl is fantastic. She's given little dialogue but brilliantly conveys, through her physical performance, the disappointment of learning everything her parents told her was a cruel lie .