Rosenstrasse

The movie is woven with care and complexity, again confirming von Trotta's place as one of the world's greatest female filmmakers.

A modest yet moving fact-based drama.

At heart a love story, Rosenstrasse benefits from strong, sympathetic performances from two actresses who play the same character at different ages.

The actors understand completely why they are there. The editing, complex because of several time strands, is more than skillful. But the screenplay by von Trotta and Pamela Katz suborns its subject.

Mawkish and manipulative, the film isn't worthy of its widely praised German director.

Not uninteresting, and it is very nicely performed, although you'll strain to learn from the movie the history on which it is based and struggle futilely to get inside the motivations of its characters.

There's something unsettling when fiction exploits this history to such puny, self-interested ends.