From Hilde, With Love review – too staid to make an impact

In East Ger­many, where direc­tor Andreas Dresen grew up, Hilde and Hans Cop­pi were talked about with the kind of rev­er­ence nor­mal­ly reserved for saints. Mem­bers of a Com­mu­nist Ger­man resis­tance group known as the Red Orches­tra, which was work­ing to aid the Sovi­et Union against the Nazis, Hilde and Hans were regard­ed more as sym­bols of hero­ism rather than real peo­ple who lived and died for their cause. From Hilde, With Love attempts to breathe life into the leg­end that Dresen was brought up with, but this hand­some­ly craft­ed biopic is too staid to make a last­ing impact.

Hilde, played with qui­et resilience by Baby­lon Berlin​’s Liv Lisa Fries, is pick­ing straw­ber­ries when the Gestapo arrive to arrest her. The film begins as it goes on, with Hilde’s idyl­lic life with Hans (Johannes Hege­mann), all kiss­ing in sun­lit gar­dens and har­bour­ing Sovi­et spies, jux­ta­posed with the unmer­ci­ful real­i­ty of the Third Reich. As she lan­guish­es in prison, where she endures an ago­nis­ing child­birth, flash­backs reveal her falling in with this group of young Com­mu­nists for whom resis­tance is an adven­ture as well as a duty. For Hilde, how­ev­er, it’s pri­mar­i­ly an act of com­pas­sion; after hear­ing pleas from Ger­man POWs via illic­it Sovi­et broad­casts she writes let­ters to their fam­i­lies, reas­sur­ing them that their sons and hus­bands are still alive. Dis­cus­sion of pol­i­tics is kept to a bare minimum.

Every one of these flash­backs seems to take place on the most gor­geous summer’s day imag­in­able. At times it’s rather too beau­ti­ful, a ​“Vis­it Ger­many” logo threat­en­ing to appear at the end of anoth­er sequence of cavort­ing by a lake or speed­ing through the coun­try­side on a motor­bike. A much more sig­nif­i­cant prob­lem is that these flash­backs play out in nonchrono­log­i­cal order for no clear rea­son. If it’s a vague stab at shak­ing up the biopic for­mu­la it doesn’t work; in prac­tice it’s need­less­ly con­fus­ing, and that the romance between reserved, slight­ly prud­ish Hilde and the dash­ing Hans feels gen­uine is in spite of this nar­ra­tive device. One par­tic­u­lar­ly affect­ing mon­tage fea­tures Hans teach­ing Hilde Morse code by tap­ping his fin­ger on her body, whether on her naked back after sex or on her knee on the bus, a secret lan­guage of love that’s also an act of rebellion.

To the film’s cred­it none of the Nazi char­ac­ters are so car­toon­ish­ly abhor­rent as to divorce them from real­i­ty. Some with­in this sys­tem, such as a prison guard who helps Hilde appeal her sen­tence, even show some human­i­ty, mak­ing their active par­tic­i­pa­tion in the régime all the more unset­tling. In the cur­rent cli­mate reject­ing com­pla­cen­cy in the face of fas­cism is a more per­ti­nent mes­sage than ever, so while its end­ing is a gut-punch it’s a shame that From Hilde, With Love isn’t the for­mal­ly bold, polit­i­cal­ly rad­i­cal film that the Cop­pis deserve.