Four years ago, German director (and owner of the coolest name in all of cinema) Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck directed his first feature — a complex, smart, completely engrossing examination of cultural repression and spying in Cold War-era East Germany. That film, The Lives of Others, skyrocketed von Donnersmarck into the arthouse spotlight, earning the director enough accolades and awards to require a mantle as long as his name to hold them all. He went to Hollywood to try to land a high-profile project to lift his star even higher, and ended up stuck with everyone else’s leftover: a remake of a French romantic thriller that had already been dumped mid-development by two other directors and at least three stars.