Here is a beautiful for the most part film exploring guilt and shame – and love of course. The guilt and shame is individual, the two leading actors both have shameful secrets, and national in how Germany responds to its Nazi past. Perhaps the film is not entirely sure of its genre. The first half is softly erotic (late fifties period costumes enhance this) and slightly sloppy love story between Michael, a 15 year old boy, and a woman in her 30s who works as a tram conductress, Hannah. Later the atmosphere is unsettled by more serious material and awkward characters that may well be developed more fully in the book that the film is based on. One is the elderly professor of law played by ex-angel, ex-Hitler, Bruno Ganz (one of my favourite actors). It is a strange part that is never properly developed, awkward, perhaps because he raises some awkward questions for his young law students. Likewise the now wealthy concentration camp survivor, living in New York who makes her main appearance near the end of the film. Even the filming now seems very distant from the warm early scenes.

Very moving for me were the moments when our hero Michael in both young and old roles failed to acknowledge his feeling for Hannah, failing to speak up in court when information he had could have been highly influential and failing to meet her in friendship when she is about to be released from prison. Both failures have a catastrophic effect on her. We see him struggle with this sense of guilt and emptiness throughout the older scenes he plays. Most arresting for me were Kate Winseltt’s beautifully shaped – eyebrows

and her slightly cold European manner – both of which seem to remind me of someone.