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Lore | 2012 | NR | - 6.7.4
A teen girl (Saski Rosendahl) is left in charge of her four siblings as they make their way across war-torn Germany and see the consequences of their parents' actions -- their father is an SS officer and their mother a staunch Nazi faithful. That includes meeting a concentration camp survivor (Kai Malina). Also with Ursina Lardi, Hans-Jochen Wagner and Nele Trebs. Directed by Cate Shortland. [1:48]
SEX/NUDITY 6 - A teen girl stands over a young man, she grabs his hand and runs it up her leg and places it under her dress; she then guides his hand through the bunches of the dress (no nudity is visible) and it is implied that the young man is manually stimulating the girl, when the girl abruptly pulls away and slaps the young man (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details).
► A teen girl walks past a fully clothed woman who appears to be getting raped by a fully clothed man: the man has his hand over the woman's mouth and we see him thrusting (no nudity visible; please see the Violence/Gore category for more details).
► A teen girl is awakened when she hears the sound of her mother panting in another room and the girl spies through a small crack in the wall: we see a man (the teen girl's father) touching the woman's breast, and then her crotch and the woman pulls away and her husband kisses her neck and she slaps him (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details).
► A teen girl unbuttons her dress and an older man helps (it is implied the teen girl is using her body to get a man to help her); the man pulls the girl close and we see a young man raise a rock above the man's head and strike him (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details).
► We see a woman getting dressed and she is putting on a bra as she steps in front of a mirror (we see her bare buttocks and the reflection of her genitals but not bare breasts). We see several women in various states of undress in a bathhouse, including an older woman's bare breasts and a younger women wearing underwear. We see a boy looking curiously at an elderly woman's bare breasts. We see a teen girl in a bathtub with a portion of her bare back and collarbone visible; the girl gets out of the bathtub and we see her bare back as she faces out a window (we do not see the perspective from outside the window and looking in). We see a woman getting dressed and she is wearing a full slip as she pulls on a dress. We see a teen girl and a pre-teen girl in slips and underwear as they swim, and a young man's bare chest and back as he swims with two shirtless boys. We see a pre-teen girl, a teen girl and a boy in a washtub together; no nudity is visible (they are siblings).
► It is implied that a woman had been raped when she exposes her upper thigh, covered in blood, to her teenage daughter (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details) and the woman begins to weep and tremble.
► A young man lies next to a teen girl and touches her collar. A young man attempts to kiss and corner a teen girl, and the teen girl pulls away and walks away. A young man grabs a teen girl's leg and then tries to hold her hand; the girl pulls away. Men and women kiss on the cheek in greeting.
► On multiple occasions we see a baby breastfeeding, once from a woman with the help of her teenage daughter and another time from a stranger, paid by the baby's teenage sister to breast-feed the baby.
VIOLENCE/GORE 7 - A young man attacks an older man who is attempting to sexually molest a teen girl (please see the Sex/Nudity category for more details); we see a rock smash down on the man's head and the young man continues to bash the man's head with the rock (we see the rock crush the older man's face as blood sprays and covers the young man's hands and the teen girl watches in horror).
► We hear two men shouting in Russian as a boy runs through a patch of forest, shots ring out and a teen girl watches as the boy (her brother) is shot; his body twists and we see the bullet wound in his chest, the girl tries to run to the boy, but a young man shouts at her to keep running away and we continue to hear gunfire; a teen girl, the boy's twin brother and pre-teen sister are all visibly upset when their grandmother asks about the boy and the teen girl explains that the boy had been shot.
► A teen girl discovers the dead body of a woman in a barn and her upper thighs are covered in black, sticky blood and ants, implying that she had been raped; the woman is face-down, the teen girl does nothing to protect two young boys and a pre-teen girl from seeing the body and we later hear the two young boys discussing how the woman's blood was filled with ants, or how ants had ridden on boats through her blood. A teen girl discovers the deceased body of a man, holding a gun in his hand (suicide is implied); as the girl investigates, leaning in close to the man's face, we see his eye missing and blood and gore in the massive wound where his eye had been (a fly is seen crawling in and out of the hole); the teen girl steals a watch from the man's wrist. We see a dead woman on the ground, face-up; her face, hands and legs are bloated and red, and blood is seen caked on her face and neck; a young man approaches the body and picks her pockets.
► We see blood covering a woman's upper thigh as she touches it and shouts at her teenage daughter; it is implied that the woman had been brutally raped (we do not see the rape); the teenage daughter acts disgusted by the blood and tries to avoid helping her mother wipe the blood away.
► A teen girl is upset by a crying baby and places the baby at the edge of a fast-moving stream; we then see a shot of the stream and a lump going down the stream, implied to be the baby but we then see the baby unharmed. A teen girl holding her infant brother dips under water, in an attempt to drown herself and the baby until a young man comes to her rescue; he dives underwater, grabs the teen girl and the baby and pulls them to safety.
► A teen girl walks past a woman being raped by a man and we see the man's hand over the woman's mouth, shushing her (no nudity or blood is visible; please see the Sex/Nudity category for more details). A teen girl slaps a young man after he begins to sexually stimulate her, with her guidance (no nudity is visible; please see the Sex/Nudity category for more details).
► A teen girl interrupts her father petting their pet dog because the girl is upset believing that the man is going to harm the dog; the man tries to calm her down, saying someone else is going to take care of the dog and as the teen girl walks away, we hear a gunshot, implying that the dog had been shot (we do not see the dead dog).
► An older man tries to grab a teen girl, and the teen girl pulls away, unharmed. A woman slaps her husband as he tries to make a sexual advance. A woman purposely kicks a man (her husband) as she gets out of a truck. A boy accidentally trips down the stairs, dropping an armful of books and gets up unharmed. A woman falls as she walks into a house and when a teen girl (her daughter) tries to help her she pushes her away. A teen girl appears to be extremely ill, unable to walk and focus her eyes when a young man lifts her and carries her; he stumbles as they walk, but we later see the teen girl awake and recovered. Two boys play "soldier" and we see one of the boys "shoot" another boy (his brother) with his hand. Two boys sing a song about being a bullet that is used in battle.
► A teen girl throws her younger brother in a chest, she sits on top of the lid and we hear the boy shouting and pounding against the chest; moments later the teen girl lifts the boy from the chest and we see him unharmed. Throughout the movie a baby cries out of hunger, much to the annoyance of the baby's older sisters and brothers. A teen girl collapses, crying and a young man comforts her.
► We see a massive collection of black and white photographs of concentration camps pasted to a wall, showing stacks of dead and emaciated bodies and bodies with obvious gunshot wounds; a teen girl goes very close to the wall and examines the photographs, we see her rip a photograph of a man (who appears to be her father) who as a commander is standing next to a massive grave; the teen girl rips down the picture of her father and we see it multiple other times in the movie as she glances at it.
► We overhear a woman telling a man that she had to "look at dead Jews" for hours to get a loaf of bread and later hear men and women discussing how photographs of concentration camps had been staged and the dead bodies were paid actors. We hear a conversation where a woman tells a teen girl, as a man agrees, that the photographs of the concentration camps featured photographs of the soldiers responsible for killing the occupants of the camps. A woman shouts at her teenage daughter, telling her that she is unable to take her son because "They kill all the children," implying that children are killed in the prison camp that the woman is being sentenced to. A loudspeaker announces to a countryside that no looting and "shooting from behind" is allowed and that all looting would be punishable by death. A boy shouts angrily at a young man, saying that the boy's twin brother was shot because the young man had stolen a person's food. An older woman shouts at a pre-teen girl after she asks if her parents are in prison being punished; the woman shouts that the girl and her brothers and sister have nothing to be ashamed of, because their parents did nothing wrong (they are Nazi war criminals). A teen girl tells her younger brother that a boy had drowned in a nearby park and that her brother had not seen the boy die because he had walked away. A teen girl tells her pre-teen sister that their aunt had died from "a cough" during WWI. A boy tells his teenage sister that all of the people in a photograph are dead.
► A man shouts at a teen girl, saying that he had caught her brother stealing; we see the man throw a bucket of milk on the ground, and the boy desperately cups it up and drinks it. A young man shouts angrily at a boy, shoving food in the boy's mouth and instructing him to eat.
► A teen girl shouts angrily at a young man, saying that he will be found and punished (referencing to an earlier incident where the young man had murdered an older man while trying to sexually assault the teen girl). A boy acts impressed when a young man tells him that he had been imprisoned for stealing, and the boy asks the young man if he had a gun. We see a woman look at books titled, "Law for Prevention of Hereditary Diseases." A woman tells a teen girl that she thought the teen girl's mother had been imprisoned. A teen girl asks her mother if she is going to prison, and the woman explains that she is going to a "camp" not a prison. A teen girl warns her younger brother that in America they have prisons for poorly behaved children, as well as children prisons. A man tells a teen girl that he is afraid of her, when the man is startled as she appears next to him. A teen girl is startled when an older woman finds her walking around her home. A teen girl dramatically shouts at a pre-teen girl (her sister), saying that she should scrape off all her skin until she is only bones. We see an older woman lift the shirt of an infant boy to reveal scabs on his torso and the older woman shouts at a teen girl, telling her that the baby (her brother) has bed bugs.
► A teen girl purposely smashes and stomps upon a collection of porcelain figurines, scooping up the broken pieces and placing them back onto a dresser. A man pours lighter fluid on a pile of books and papers and sets them on fire. Two boys gleefully break out the windows of a house and their teenage sister chides them.
► We see a used, dirty bedpan next to a woman's bed. We hear the sound of urination and see a teen girl stooping to urinate (no urine is seen). A young man urinates (we hear the sound) as his back is turned to a teen girl.
LANGUAGE 4 - 2 scatological terms, 3 mild obscenities, 1 derogatory racial remark, name-calling (klutz, coward, baby, dirty little thief, fool, parasite, bleating wife, filthy), exclamations (shut up), 2 religious exclamations.
SUBSTANCE USE - We see men and women smoking cigarettes throughout the movie, and a young man smokes cigarettes throughout the movie.
DISCUSSION TOPICS - WWII, Nazi war criminals, concentration camps, shame, burden of guilt, Hitler, Hitler youth, war crimes, rape, responsibility, suicide, hatred, regret.
MESSAGE - The perspective of Nazi criminal's surviving children is a very new story of the aftermath of WWII.
CAVEATS
Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.
We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.
Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.
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