Nelly & Nadine

At the end of World War II, a boatload of women survivors of Nazi concentration camps debarked in Malmo, Sweden, to begin new lives. Someone filmed this, and this is director Magnus Gerten third movie tracking down the stories of the women shown in that bit of film.

This one is an amazing and touching transcontinental Lesbian love story, spanning prewar literary salons, World War II resistance, survival in the concentration camps, separation, reunification, and a new life in South America.

Note to screenwriters: this would make a hell of a good fiction film, when you aren't constrained by what pictures happened to survive....

I was already interested when I first heard about this documentary feature, but as someone who primarily watched fiction and especielly so on the theater, I gave it a pass for the time being.

When I heard it was nominated for the Swedish equailent of the Oscar, 'Guldbagge', my interest peaked once more, and I was able to catch it on TV.

For what it is, and as simply told it is, it's a very beautiful documentary. It's shot and edited very well and tells a very emotional and incredible love story, that was very interesting to be sure.

Overall, I would recommend it if you're looking for an interesting documentary. In that area, it's very incredible indeed!

At the very start of this documentary, we are shown a photograph of a woman staring into the camera. It's fairly unlikely she knew it was pointing at the group in which she was standing, but it was taken as the Ravensbrück concentration camp was being liberated by the Swiss Red Cross in 1945. She is quickly identified as Nadine Hwang and now director Magnus Gertten tries to piece together her story. For that, he is fortunate. She kept a series of diaries and when it falls to her grand-daughter to finally read them - with quite a degree of emotion-laden trepidation - we discover that before the war she was in a loving relationship with Nelly Mousset Vos. With the aid of photographs and the sometimes quite harrowing narration from her text, we trace the lives of these two women both before and after the horrors of the Nazi invasion. Not wishing, in any way, to trivialise this - but as a documentary it's all a bit lightweight. The story itself is one that's truly ghastly, empowering, emotional and sometimes quite shocking, but factually there is just way too much missing, and what we do have to go on and/or know is squeezed just once too often. It might actually have made for a better source as a drama, allowing some of the understandable gaps to be filled in, albeit speculatively, and leaving less scope for us to have to make our own guesses about their difficulties not just with the SS but with a society as yet unfamiliar with their candid and loving lesbianism. Much of the heavy lifting comes from the soundtrack - it turns out Nelly was quite a good singer, too - but somehow it's really only the shell of a poignant story that falls disappointingly short. It is worth watching, and the plentiful photographs and some archive footage add a little richness, but it doesn't quite deliver.

As "Nelly & Nadine" (2022 release from Sweden; 92 min.) opens, it is "April 28, 1945" and a large contingent of women reach Malmo, Sweden, including Nadine Wang. The event was recorded by multiple sources, and we get some amazing footage. The voice-over wonders what Nadine was thinking about "and I found the answer in northern France". We are introduced to Sylvie, the granddaughter of Nelly, and keeper of tons of archive materials which she has never reviewed closely... until now. At this point we are 10 minutes into the documentary.

Couple of comments: this is the latest from Swedish producer-director magnus Gertten ("Every Face Has a Name"). Here he carefully reconstructs the absolutely remarkable story of two women who meet in a concentration camp, get split up, and what came thereafter. The movie uses Sylvie's reading of numerous documents and watching ample 8mm footage to built the story, layer upon layer. The movie's pace is deliberately quite slow, so that we can register what we are hearing and watching. There is a fantastic classical score to accentuate it all.

"Nelly & Nadine" was released in late 2022, presumably so as to qualify for the Oscar nominations, which it failed to garner. Don't let that fool you. This documentary id currently rated 94% Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, and for good reason. I stumbled onto this film last night on Amazon Prime. So glad I found this. Not only is the story remarkable, but it contains a ton of footage that has high historical value as well. If you are in the mood for a moving love story of a different kind, I'd readily suggest you check this out, and draw your own conclusion.

Magnus Gertten's 2022 documentary 'Nelly & Nadine', the classic love story of 2 survivors of the Nazi concentration camps of WWII, is also a film about film-making. Gertten patiently constructs a fragmented narrative to reflect his main subject's trepidation. Sylvie Bianchi is the granddaughter of Nelly Mousset-Vos, a Belgian opera singer who fell in love with a mysterious Chinese national Nadine Hwang when they met over a rendition of Puccini's 'Madame Butterfly' on Christmas Eve 1944 at Ravensbrück. In 'Nelly & Nadine', this farmer's wife in idyllic Northern France embarks on a personal journey in relation to this remarkable couple.

It reminds me of another recent film, 2022's 'Three Minutes: A Lengthening'. Bianca Stigter's forensic examination of old cine film of a Polish village immediately before the Holocaust (based on the book 'Three Minutes In Poland' by musician Glenn Kurtz published in 2014) uses the moving images of people and place as a research tool for examining bite-sized pieces of erased history. 'Nadine & Nelly' starts with the archive of women refugees liberated by the Red Cross disembarking at Malmö, Sweden, on 28th April 1945, Gertten (who has made two other films about women shown in these pictures, 'Harbour of Hope' (2021) and 'Every Face Has a Name' (2015)) lets the camera hover over Nadine Hwang's intriguingly long gaze. What is she thinking? How did she get here? And we're off ...

It's fair to say there are bumps in the road. Sylvie's grandmother left behind a mysterious Pandora's box of documents. By presenting 'pieces' of a story , the film raises as many questions as it answers. Gradually, a little frustratingly at times, it sets out to answer them, so I did eventually find out what I wanted to know. Probably history will take care of the rest, but for the purposes of this film 'Nelly & Nadine' is a beautiful story that affected me very deeply.

A couple of noteworthy things. Reels of Super 8 film are very illuminating, mostly shot by Nadine during the couple's life in Caracas after the war, adding 'colour' and intimacy which a still photo would struggle to convey. There is also powerful prose and poetic verse, entries from Nelly's diary manuscripts which the couple worked on together after the war with a view to publishing (rejected, strangely, possibly because of the nature of their relationship and social taboos of the time). Pure horror is Nelly's account of the couple's first separation "At the top, crowning the mountain, lies the camp, Mauthausen, the antechamber of hell", the 5 days and nights of the train journey described in harrowing detail along with the still image of the infamous 186-step 'Staircase Of Death' carved out of stone up which quarry workers were forced to carry huge slabs of stone until they dropped dead.

The film contains many other aspects, not least highlighting the journey of discovery Sylvie goes on, but 'Nelly & Nadine' comes good by the end, so it's well worth watching Gertten & Co.'s account of this remarkable couple's life. British viewers can watch on BBC iPlayer as part of the 'Storyville' collection of award-winning documentaries.