Synopsis
Europe 1990, the Berlin wall has just crumbled: Katrine, raised in East Germany, but now living in Norway for the last 20 years, is a “war child”; the result of a love relationship between a Norwegian woman and a German occupation soldier during World War II. She enjoys a happy family life with her mother, her husband, daughter and granddaughter. But when a lawyer asks her and her mother to witness in a trial against the Norwegian state on behalf of the war children, she resists. Gradually, a web of concealments and secrets is unveiled, until Katrine is finally stripped of everything, and her loved ones are forced to take a stand: What carries more weight, the life they have lived together, or the lie it is based on?
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Cast
- Juliane KöhlerKatrine
- Liv UllmannAse Evensen
- Sven NordinBjarte
- Ken DukenSven Solbach
- Dennis StorhøiHogseth
- Vicky KriepsKathrin Lehnhaber
- Rainer BockHugo
- Ursula WernerHiltrud
- Jürgen RißmannLattoch
- Julia Bache-WiigAnne
Recommendations
- 80
The Dissolve
Despite some mawkish moments, this portrait of where espionage and domesticity collide is a unique take on typical John le Carré turf. - 75
NPR
Two Lives makes a decent thriller, though it does seem a touch overloaded with grainy flashbacks and plotty flourishes retrieved from Sergei Eisenstein (or perhaps Brian De Palma). Not that these faults matter much: The most ham-fisted filmmaker couldn't ruin the incendiary material on which this tale is built. - 60
Village Voice
The film takes one entire act too long to shake its mopey fog and get crackling. - 60
The New York Times
Two Lives is an absorbing, well-acted, moderately suspenseful mystery, although its time line of events is fuzzy to the point of impenetrability. - 50
Slant Magazine
The film's educational impetus is to announce to the world that even picture-perfect Norwegians continue to pay a heavy price for the horrors of WWII.
