Divided We Fall (2000)

Academy Awards, USA 2001

Nominee Oscar

Best Foreign Language Film Czech Republic.

Sony Pictures Classics
Directed by Jan Hřebejk
My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb Wikipedia
(DVD, Columbia TriStar)

A Czech couple take in a Jewish boy who has escaped from a concentration camp. They hide him in a room behind their pantry, where he spends his days and nights. They get frequent, unexpected visits from a Nazi collaborator and old friend of the wife. He is in love with her and manipulates the couple with insinuations and suspicion. The husband, recuperating from an injury, takes a job with the Nazis while the wife, alone at home, is forced on a lunch date in the country which nearly turns into rape. Later, the collaborator insists they take in an ailing Nazi, sure that the boy they are hiding will be discovered in the process. However, she claims to be pregnant despite the fact that her husband is infertile. Fearing discovery of their situation, the husband insists she get pregnant as soon as possible via the boy they are hiding. It works and they escape with their lives. As the war ends the Czechs arrest all Nazis and their collaborators, meaning their old antagonist ends up in jail. When his wife goes into labor, the husband is desperate to find a doctor, and again thinks fast to save himself and his family. Overplotted melodrama  high on symbolism but low on subtlety.