IN THE AFTERMATH OF MOTHERHOOD

KEIRA KNIGHTLEY STARS IN NEW WWII MOVIE THE AFTERMATH ALONGSIDE JASON CLARKE AND ALEXANDER SKARSGÅRD

As I watched Keira Knightley loat through The Aftermath on a cashmere cloud of nice clothes, elegantly attired and showcased in one scene after another, it occurred to me everyone should be photographed like that at least once.

Then I remembered Knightley has already been photographed like that. About half a dozen times, no less, which comes from working with directors like Joe Wright (Pride and Prejudice, Atonement, Anna Karenina).

So it’s a high bar for Knightley, who gets a lot of period roles and wears a lot of awesome period outits. Even by those standards, she looks swell in The Aftermath, playing a British woman living in the chaos of a surly, defeated Germany just after WWII.

“It’s funny you bring that up, because this is the irst time that I worked really closely with the director of photography. Like a real, close collaboration. And I think you see that, where the camera, and what it’s seeing, functions as a character in the ilm,” Knightley said, referring to her partnership with cinematographer Franz Lustig on The Aftermath, directed by James Kent of Testament of Youth.

Lustig’s camera brings a lush formality to The Aftermath that nods to the classic, high-style movies of the era, and that also

feels appropriate to the heightened passions the story invokes.

Knightley plays Rachael, the upper-class wife of a British oficer (Jason Clarke) in charge of the Allied force occupying Hamburg just after Germany’s surrender. He oversees the tense, wary peace between the Germans and the British occupiers, and it’s part of his job to hunt down former Nazis trying to blend in with civilians.

Like, maybe, the handsome German architect (Alexander Skarsgård) who is hosting them in his mansion. He’s lost his wife to the war, and Rachael’s lost a son. Their grief eventually becomes the source of mutual understanding, leading to an intimacy that threatens to become perilous.

Knightley is now a mum herself, and I asked her whether being a parent affected the way she played a heartsick mother.