Atmospheric ‘The Aftermath’: A foreign affair, right under the roof of Keira Knightley

lingering grief and loss, and in Lubert she finds an alluringly available fellow griever. To its benefit, the story doesn’t turn the husband’s own emotional devastation over his son’s death into stereotypical loutish behavior, for which Clarke is visibly grateful. Knightley, so good in the recent “Colette,” struggles with an over-indicating streak, though in her quietest moments the grief feels authentically realized.

So few page-to-screen adaptations relying on a mixture of sweep, intimacy, sex and war-torn exoticism figure out how to accommodate those warring impulses. Anthony Minghella’s “The English Patient” (1996) certainly did, and in its first half, the film version of “Atonement,” starring Knightley, did, too.

“The Aftermath” comes from a personal place for novelist and co-screenwriter Brook: His grandfather, a post-WWII governor of a German district, lived for a time in a requisitioned home with a German family. But his invented love triangle lacks the gradations and uncertainties of life. It’s strictly movie stuff. Director Kent’s visual and design team, including cinematographer Franz Lustig, production designer Sonja Klaus and costume designer Bojana Nikitovic, collaborate earnestly and well. You notice the atmosphere, because the movie would float away without it.

I kept thinking of Donald Duck’s nephews: For all its noble intentions, “The Aftermath” is dewey, gooey and, even with its moments, hooey.