Lea

Running time: N/A

She's twenty-one-year-old, East Slovakian Lea, muteness her defense against a world in which she witnessed her mother's violation and death at her father's hands. Daily she honors her mother's dying request that she write, placing poems in a makeshift mausoleum. Through a barter by her foster parents, Lea is sold off to Bavarian Herbert Strehlow, whose 20 years in the Foreign Legion have failed to heal the pain of his wife's sudden death. He restores antiques, living the life of a recluse. At first, Lea's protective shell freezes Herbert out, frustrating him and giving him to outbursts of violence which serve only to remind her of her father. Then, from faltering attempts to communicate with each other, each comes to recognize the other not as a monster but as a similarly damaged person, and their relationship begins to bloom. Nominated for the 1997 German Film Award as Best Film, Ivan Fila's Lea inspires a unique instinct in human nature--the capacity to find love in even the most desperate of times. --Neil Hooper