Ibiza, 1990. Martha has lived a solitary and quiet life in Spain for over 40 years. One evening she meets her new neighbor, Jo, a young DJ from Germany who has come to take advantage of the new wave of electronic music. They become friends, and Jo realizes Martha has hidden her German origins for mysterious reasons…

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Barbet Schroeder’s career has matched his own character: international, indefinable and unexpected. Known for Hollywood movies like Reversal of Fortune with Jeremy Irons or Murder By Numbers with Sandra Bullock, the Swiss director has also had a French career in features and documentaries. Amnesia shares the Nazi theme of his 2007 documentary about Jacques Vergès, Terror’s Advocate. That is the more interesting aspect of his new film, a strange story that mixes Ibiza techno with memories of WWII for awkward, moralizing discussions under a care-free sun. While Marthe Keller and Max Riemelt do offer up a measure of charm, getting things off to a good start that is both enigmatic and troubling, Amnesia suffers from an arc that gets bogged down and becomes predictable, veering off into a different movie that is less successful. The result is old fashioned and hapless.