Coup de Grâce

1919, the Baltic. With the fighting that extended out of the Russian civil war spread across the region, German volunteers are quartered in an old manor house. Sophie, the young countess of the house, is in love with a Prussian officer who is a friend of her brother's, and he gives her nothing back. After the rejection Sophie crosses to another side, the side of the Bolsheviks. Volker Schlöndorff adapted the film from Marguerite Yourcenar's novel. Margarethe von Trotta co-wrote it and plays the lead; it was the last film the two made together before von Trotta moved into directing her own work. The refusal of love and the choosing of a political side look here like two faces of the same movement. Frozen landscapes, emptied houses and a coldness in which nobody explains anything to anybody set the tone.