LORE (MA15+)
When: In cinemas now
Where: On limited release
It’s been eight years since Australian director Cate Shortland’s knockout debut Somersault, which launched the career of Abbie Cornish and starred a pre-Avatar Sam Worthington.
She returns to similarly angst-ridden territory, but ups the stakes considerably by shooting this feature entirely in Germany, and in German language.
Shortland doesn’t speak German, but spent years adapting the film from World War Two novel The Dark Room by Rachel Seiffert.
It’s an audaciously different take on the Holocaust story, seen through the eyes of 15-year-old Lore (Saskia Rosendahl, pictured), the eldest child of two Nazis who abandon her after the death of Hitler in 1945.
Destitute Lore is now in charge of her four siblings – tomboy sister Liesel, rascal twins Gunther and Jurgen and infant baby Peter, and drags them on a 900 kilometre journey to their grandmother’s house in Hamburg.
Starving and hopelessly out of her depth, Lore meets Thomas (Kai Malina), a young Jewish survivor, who inexplicably decides to help the struggling minors in their quest across the terrifying Black Forest. Thomas is the manifestation of all Lore has been taught to hate, but the attraction between the two is charged and compelling.
Stunningly shot by Australian wunderkind cinematographer Adam Arkapaw (Animal Kingdom, Snowtown), the story plays out on a captivatingly bleak series of landscapes – the real life locations of many Holocaust atrocities.
The relentless hunger, filth, tears, dirt, blood and guts will be too much for some viewers, but it’s handled with the artful tension of a thriller.
Shortland has unearthed another star in Rosendahl, who plays the anguished damsel in distress with fierce grace. Interestingly the actress was cast just a few days before shooting began after Shortland had rejected over 300 girls.
Lore has been submitted to the Academy Awards as Australia’s nomination for Best Foreign Language film. It deserves to be nominated, and to be seen.
