Jeanette Hain Movies

Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes star in The Hours director Stephen Daldry's haunting period drama concerning the relationship between a 15-year-old German boy and a mysterious woman twice his age, and the way that it grows doubly complex when the man reencounters the woman years later and discovers a shocking truth about her past. Based on author Bernhard Schlink's best-selling novel of the same name, the film opens on the character of Michael Berg (Ralph Fiennes) in middle age -- cold, remote, and emotionally withdrawn. It then moves back in time to 1950s Berlin, where ailing teenager Michael (now played by David Kross) has fallen ill with fever, and is discovered in the street by Hanna, a woman in her thirties. After Michael recovers, the two immediately lapse into a torrid affair and Michael falls prey to the confusion of his own burgeoning sexuality. Their liaisons are often marked by Hanna's request that Michael read to her (hence the title). Later, when Michael returns to Hanna's flat and finds it deserted, her absence becomes an emotional blow for which he is completely unprepared, and indeed, scarred for life. The film then moves forward in time by eight years. Michael -- now a law student -- walks into a courtroom and comes across Hanna, one of a series of Nazi prison guards being tried for murderous war crimes during World War II. As he watches her on the witness stand, memories of their past experiences together bring him to the point of realization concerning a startling, long-buried truth about Hanna -- and Michael knows that if he divulges this information, it could modify the prison sentence handed out and dramatically alter her fate. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Set in a Europe on the brink of war, The Journey to Kafiristan is the story of two women who leave their home in Switzerland to journey together to Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1939. Annemarie Schwarzenbach is a Swiss socialite and writer who leaves Geneva with Ella Maillart, an ethnologist. Both women are eager to flee their past and strive towards different goals: Ella is in search of a tribe of nomads who populate the caves of the Kafiristan Valley, while Annemarie, a drug addict is looking for meaning in her life. As they traverse Europe and Afghanistan, the two women are drawn together into a passionate affair, one increasingly fraught with tensions that mirror those of a continent preparing for war. The Journey to Kafiristan was screened at the 2002 Philadelphia International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide

Based on true story, Requiem Fuer Eine Romantische Frau was inspired by the relationship between poet Clemens Bretano (Sylvester Groth) and Auguste Bussmann (Janina Sachau), a 17-year-old girl whose father was a successful banker. Clemens becomes infatuated with Auguste, and she soon falls for him as well. While Auguste eagerly embraces a bohemian lifestyle, Clemens is unhappy with her lack of refinement and even tires of her abundant sexual appetite. Auguste's eccentricity soon descends into instability, and she attempts suicide several times as she slips deeper into madness. A historical drama that explores manners and mores as much as actions, Requiem Fuer Eine Romantische Frau was the second feature for director Dagmar Knoepfel, whose previous film as 1994's Brigitta. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide