There’s a ripping good story buried somewhere in “The Aftermath,” an intriguing but ultimately disappointing story set in the rubble of post-World War II Germany.
A few months after Allied bombs have reduced Hamburg to smoldering ash, British officer Lewis Morgan (Jason Clarke) requisitions a stately home on the city’s outskirts and sends for his wife, Rachael (Keira Knightley), a sadly beautiful waif who is still processing traumatic memories from the Blitz. Morgan, whose colleagues snicker at him behind his back for going “queer for the natives,” is appalled at the impoverishment and dispossession suffered by the German people.
When the owner of the Morgans’ new home - a handsome architect named Stephen Lubert - prepares to move out, along with his teenage daughter, Morgan insists that he stay. With a possible former Nazi lurking in the attic while a clueless British husband and his bitter wife are enjoying luxe accommodations down below, what could possibly go wrong?
Plenty. But, in the final analysis, not nearly enough. Based on Rhidian Brook’s book of the same name, “The Aftermath” is inspired by the author’s grandfather, a British colonel who also commandeered a German home after the war and also refused to evict its owners. One would hope that’s where the similarities end in a story that promises to be a provocative examination of moral culpability and mutual incomprehension and resentment, but winds up being a plotty, naughty potboiler.
As ever, Knightley is exquisite as a trembling, fragile embodiment of exquisite suffering, while Alexander Skarsgard lends equal dollops of stoicism and sex appeal to the unfailingly polite Lubert. It’s all veddy, veddy attractive and tragic, with the tastefulness of the production becoming ever more oppressive as the erotic and political complications pile up, including a subplot involving a group of young Nazi revanchists.
Directed by James Kent (“Testament of Youth”) with BBC-approved production values, “The Aftermath” should evoke the likes of Graham Greene and Noel Coward. Instead, it devolves into a soap opera worthy of Barbara Cartland, full of perfunctory plot twists and sudden, seductive lunges.
Substituting emotionalism for genuine emotion, and contrivance for complexity, “The Aftermath” is a nice-looking dud: dutiful, dull and only mildly diverting.
MOVIE REVIEW
“The Aftermath”
Grade: D+
Starring Keira Knightley, Alexander Skarsgard and Jason Clarke. Directed by James Kent.
Rated R for sexuality, nudity and violence, including some disturbing images. 109 minutes. Check listings for theaters. 1 hour, 48 minutes.
Bottom line: A nice-looking soap opera but dull and only mildly diverting
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