It is as elegantly mounted and capably acted as one would expect considering the pedigree, but, in my opinion, this film dispenses with intrigue as it goes along rather than building it. The initial scenario and milieu—British officers and their wives uneasily coexisting with the vanquished German people in bombed-out Hamburg a few months after the Allied victory—are fascinating, tense, and indicative of a drama painted in moral shades of grey.

But then the Keira Knightley (the British wife) and Alexander Skarsgård (a German architect) characters start sleeping together, and the rest of the film is chiefly devoted to addressing, in rather maudlin and predictable terms, the question of whether she will leave with her brooding new German paramour or rekindle her love for her stoic military husband, played by Jason Clarke. The romantic elements never feel credible, undermined in part by muted-verging-on-nonexistent chemistry among the generally skillful leads...and also the sense there are more interesting stories not being told around every corner.