IN LOVE WITH LOU – A PHILOSOPHER’S LIFE

Göttingen, 1933. Legendary writer-psychoanalyst Lou Andreas-Salomé lives in seclusion, fearful of her persecution by the Nazi regime. One day a star-struck young scholar turns up on her doorstep, and he refuses to be sent away. After a couple of false starts, the prickly septuagenarian and the hesitant teacher become friends. He begins helping her write her memoirs—and what memoirs they are! Born in 1861 to a wealthy German-speaking family in St. Petersburg, Lou was already headstrong as a young girl. Scandalizing polite society on many occasions, she vowed never to fall in love, but to dedicate her life to intellectualism. Lou and author-philosopher Paul Rée, a friend of Nietzsche’s, flout convention by living and studying together in Berlin. Lou breaks her anti-romantic vow—and Paul Rée’s heart—by engaging in a tempestuous relationship with young, unknown poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Many affairs follow, before Lou begins attending lectures by Sigmund Freud. Only when she becomes an esteemed psychoanalyst herself can she recognize her own childhood trauma. IN LOVE WITH LOU—A PHILOSOPHER’S LIFE is a fascinating study of a brilliant mind. (In German with subtitles) —B.B.