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Normally, I prefer movies that take their time and allow the viewer to digest everything that is seen, heard and happening. However, there needs to be something to take one's time with. Here we get long pauses, people staring into space with blank expressions and dialogue that has "I'm sorry" in almost every conversation, sometimes more than once. As often as not, the dialogue ends with someone walking out/away leaving the conversation hanging.

This continues for 2 hours. There is a plot/story but it could have been handled in 30 minutes. Yes, that can be stretched out with some close-ups and some symbolic scenes and mood setting and certainly some character development but even that should amount to something.

The movie ends with us not knowing much more about the protagonists than we did at the beginning. We have two young Japanese lesbians with various problems and insecurities. One of them meets a female Iranian student and some complications and misunderstandings ensue. The pattern and results are predictable although not actually resolved.

I was curious about the concept behind the story but it really was a waste of time. Mercilessly stretching out a very thin script and very little content of any kind does not equal art or entertainment.

If you are a fan of badly damaged and maladjusted characters, dark moods, sexual stereotypes and cliches from both women in prison films and East Asian ghost images and don't care about logic or cohesiveness this could be your kind of thing but I don't know why you would remember this example a day later. You might get some entertainment by trying to guess which off-the-shelf/cut-and-paste element will be trotted out next.

This is very derivative. There might be a few people left who will think this mishmash is subversive or pushes boundaries. That would be a naive impression. Every element in this mishmash (I apologize but that description bears repeating) was seen decades ago and better in any of a hundred Japanese films and in other places too but that is the obvious root. We've seen it all before and one would have to be addicted to this kind of content to get anything out of it. It went stale LONG ago. And just to be clear, this is actually a toned down, restrained version. Perhaps that is because it is a Taiwanese rather than a Japanese production.

I have to hand it to the actors and actresses because they had to gyrate, pose and emote in various compromising ways and that had to be a challenge but again, we have seen more and better before. I hope they were fairly paid or at least recognized for their efforts.

Wartime propaganda films are frequently problematic. They tend to have very forced, artificial dialogue and characters and their content and perspective often age badly in light of information that came out later. They do not easily lend themselves to either entertainment or art. In this case, the pretensions make the problems even worse.

The basic premise here is that not all Germans were Nazis and a number of them actively opposed the regime. This can be seen as an important thing to point out in 1943 but here this is done very awkwardly. The protagonist played by Paul Lukacs and his family are completely artificial with an unbelievable personal history. There are too many holes in all of it to be believable. Furthermore, his plan of action is also ill-conceived to the point of being bizarre. His attempts at political/moralizing speeches are likewise forced, strangely worded and fall flat. The difficulty Lukacs must of had in dealing with it all comes across. To some extent it feeds into the character who if real must have been in a state of stress bordering on hysteria. I don't think that was the intention but it is there and the contrasting over-controlled nature of the children is another strange twist that warrants psychoanalysis. One would think, that creating an anti-Nazi plot and logical dialogue to go with it would be an straightforward thing but here it is nowhere to be found.

Other characters are likewise weak or lacking in credibility. Lukacs' prime counterpoint is a Romanian named "Teck" (Romania was allied to Germany in WW2) and he is something of a mess as well but such self centred, unscrupulous characters do exist and are a mainstay of many movies. What Teck and his wife are doing together is completely un-explainable. Their relationship makes no sense and it stretches every bound of imagination to consider how it could even exist at all. My sympathies to the actress (Geraldine Fitzgerald) who had to deal with that role. It really gets ridiculous at times.

Betty Davis, although top billed, is not in one of her dominant roles. Her presence was apparently to lend credibility to the film and gain viewers. Her character is another strange part of the whole convoluted mess. The other supporting players are likewise neither interesting or entertaining. Don't blame yourself if your brain backs away and you fall asleep watching this. I stayed awake because the convolutions edged into being unintentionally funny but how could this subject matter ever be funny?

Blame must be placed on the writers Hammett and Hellman. The actors try to do their jobs but they are fighting the characters, plot and dialogue all the way.