With the Third Reich on the brink of surrender in 1945 Germany, the family of an SS officer scrambles to get out of the way of advancing Allied troops. The icy mother soon tells 14-year-old Lore (an impressive Saskia Rosendahl) that she alone must take her four younger siblings to her grandmother’s house in Hamburg, many miles away.
Lore, trained all her life to be a steely daughter of the Fatherland, for the first time is confronted with what German adults have done.
Based on a novel by Rachel Seiffert, Australian director Cate Shortland’s film could be called a coming-of-age tale, if coming of age means realizing that you have been lied to all your life, and that the world doesn’t much care whether you live or die. It’s really more of a disguised horror movie, with a somber historical hook.
The aftermath of war means pitiless, drawn-out shots of people who died in dreadful ways. There’s a stranger, Thomas, who claims to be a Jew released from Buchenwald, and who may or may not want to help, considering Lore’s ingrained anti-Semitism.
Shortland makes extensive use of close-ups that withhold as much information as they offer. Occasionally that becomes trite, as when Lore becomes delirious from illness. At other times, it creates an admirable drip-drip of dread as the children cross frequently beautiful Black Forest landscape.
“Lore” is the sort of movie you’d already expect to rip your heart out, but that doesn’t diminish the tragedy when it does arrive.