The actor and singer on growing up in Bremen after the second world war, becoming Germany’s Meryl Streep – and her new octogenarian lesbian romance

Surely, I suggest to Barbara Sukowa – as she strolls around her garden in Brooklyn and I watch from 3,500 miles away on WhatsApp – it’s time lesbians were shown differently in cinema. Out and proud, not leading furtive double lives. Maybe it’s because they are so often set in the past: The Favourite, Lizzie, Ammonite, Portrait of a Lady on Fire. But Two of Us, Sukowa’s new film, about two octogenarian women in a provincial French town, is set in the present day.

That’s not the key difference, she says. “Portrait was about young attractive women. It has a titillating quality for men.” Two of Us is notable for its lack of sensual moments.

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