GamerTab That was an excellent one.

Hayden Kane There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

JohnnyLee1 Rushes along. Interesting times but doesn't settle into a rhythm. Don't like narration. Was the story based on fact? Didn't finish watching.

sriram_m What makes this film so profound is its genuine literary quality(rarely found in period drama films); masterful and artistic portrayal. Background score haunts soul with its mellow and beauty. This masterpiece gives rich and profound experience to audience with its intellectual, complex and poetic tone.The film is based on the life of the German poet Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) and upon his long relationships with two sisters, Caroline and Charlotte von Lengefeld. This film won't focus on Schiller's relationship with Goethe, as some people may expect, since they are such giants in German literature and history.There are two cuts of the movie available, shorter cinema version and the Directors cut. I recommend longer version of 138 mins to experience true substance of the film.The film was nominated for the Golden Bear Award at the 64th Berlin International Film Festival, and had its premiere at the festival. It was selected as the German entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 87th Academy Awards, but was not nominated.

Bourban Fink SO disappointed in this film. I had high hopes. I saw this film (the almost 3 hour version) at a recent film festival in Los Angeles. The editing was terrible and choppy. The use of zoom-in's was odd as the feel of the story did not support such a harsh visual choice. As other reviewers have mentioned, this film looks beautiful: the sets are amazingly detailed, the costumes and the lighting are perfect for the time period but the film is VERY SLOW in its telling of the story. I'm left wondering what was the point of showing the sister's mother's carriage breaking down? No plot point here. I would like the 3 hours of my life back but instead I will write this review. Lots of editing needed and then the film may be acceptable as a TV movie, not Germany's submission as a contender for the foreign film Oscar. Germany can do better than this.

kleiner_fuchs (note: I watched the short version, about 140 minutes, of this film)Beautiful landscapes, beautiful interiors with subtle natural lighting, beautiful actors and some beautiful moments don't save this film from being a serious disappointment that may be tolerable on a TV screen, but certainly not on a cinema screen.Allegedly this is a story about passion, and early on in the film there is a promising moment when Schiller, soaking wet and half-frozen after rescuing a child out of a stream, is warmed up by the sisters clinging to his body; this was quite erotic, but sadly it remained the only erotic moment in the whole film. The director's approach to sensuality and passion here is much too buttoned up; the result is bland and soporific. You can't have women like Herzsprung and Confurius in such a film and never have them undress; this is simply inexcusable.I won't talk about the score here; the music is so irrelevant that it doesn't even affect the film negatively. I'd like to talk about scenes: Usually, a film, be it a Hollywood film or an art film, is made of scenes; a succession of scenes, with each individual scene having a beginning, an ending, a development in between, and a relation to the preceding and to the following scenes.Dominik Graf obviously doesn't believe in scenes. Take, for example, the beginning of his film: First shot is a close-up of Confurius sitting in a coach. I expected that I would get to know this character now and that I would be guided into the world of the film. Well, I was wrong. Suddenly an ugly voice-over starts explaining who this girl is and what she is about to do. Then we cut to something else. So what about the opening scene? There simply is no opening scene! This is terrible. Imagine a writer writing a novel and not even getting his first sentence right. The editing is terrible throughout. I remember at one point there is a cut to a wide shot of a street, and about half a second later there is another cut away to something else before we even had time to appreciate what is going on in this street. Terrible. However, the general problem concerning the editing is not that it is too fast, but (and I don't know if the writer/director or the editor is to blame for it) that the editor was incapable of giving the story a compelling structure, a recognizable rhythm. Instead of a succession of meaningful scenes we get an erratic tapestry of meaningless pretty shots, and even if these shots group themselves to a kind of individual scene from time to time, there is no weight behind it, no sense that this scene had to start at exactly this point and had to end at exactly that point. In contrast to the sad mess that "Die geliebten Schwestern" is, you may want to have a look at Kubrick's "Lolita" (there may be many other good examples, but this film comes to my mind right now as a benchmark for masterful writing): Instead of trying to cram as many scenes of Nabokov's novel as possible into the screenplay, they wrote mainly long or very long unforgettable scenes, that give the actors time to breathe and to unfold.Bottom line: If you love the art of filmmaking and wan't to spare yourself some serious frustration, I don't recommend this one.