The Aftermath(2019)

Storyline

• Set in postwar Germany in 1946, Rachael Morgan (Keira Knightley) arrives in the ruins of Hamburg in the bitter winter, to be reunited with her husband Lewis (Jason Clarke), a British colonel charged with rebuilding the shattered city. But as they set off for their new home, Rachael is stunned to discover that Lewis has made an unexpected decision: They will be sharing the grand house with its previous owners, a German widower (Alexander Skarsgård) and his troubled daughter. In this charged atmosphere, enmity and grief give way to passion and betrayal. — Fox Searchlight Pictures The film takes place in Germany after the Second World War. The country is going through a very difficult time: around devastation and famine. Lewis Morgan is a British military soldier appointed by the command as interim mayor of Hamburg. This person has to raise the city from scratch. He arrives here with his wife, with whom he settles in a luxurious mansion. A German architect also lives in it with his emotionally unstable daughter. This man is also working to rebuild the city. — Peter-Patrick76 (peter-patrick@mail.com) Hamburg, Germany, 1946. In the aftermath of WWII, Colonel Lewis Morgan moves into the requisitioned house of former German architect Stefan Lubert and his troubled teenage daughter Freda, tasked with overseeing the reconstruction of Allied-occupied Hamburg and helping the population recover. As the British officer reunites with his wife Rachel after a long separation, suddenly, living under the same roof with the original occupants of the lavish mansion ratchets up the tension, raising suspicion and antipathy. Now, fleeting glances add fuel to the fire, and sooner or later, forbidden passions and heartbreak will enter the equation. In this uneasy arrangement, is there any hope left for humanity? — Nick Riganas It's five months after the end of WWII. Rachael Morgan has just joined her husband, British Army Colonel Lewis Morgan, in Hamburg, where he has been assigned as part of the Allied post-war mission to rebuild the city and to stamp out any Nazi or Nazi-sympathetic insurrection that may have lingered from the war. They are to live in the requisitioned country manor house belonging to widowed Stephen Lubert, an architect by trade before the war, and his teen daughter Freda Lubert, that requisitioning including keeping on a handful of the manor staff. Lewis has allowed the Luberts to remain living in a small wing of the house rather than they moving to the camp in he knowing the strain such would place on the city and his work. Rachael detests everything about this situation in not speaking the language, and living in a bombed out city, but mostly sharing the house with Germans who she blames for the death of her and Lewis' preteen son Michael Morgan when their home in London was hit with a bomb during the war, and pretending to be happy with a still largely absent Lewis, there existing a strain in their marriage ever since Michael's death, exacerbated in she knowing of a purposeful action by Lewis immediately after. Both Stephen and Freda are also emotionally scarred in Stephen's wife too a casualty of the war, Freda who is at an age of needing guidance as she grows into womanhood, and in losing their home despite not having been a member of the Nazi Party. In both of their emotional need, Rachael and Stephen eventually fall into each other's arms to embark in a romantic relationship. Beyond what is happening around them with Lewis' job and the war still on-going for some, the question becomes whether the other is what each of Rachael and Stephen is truly looking for in their need. — Huggo