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There’s a great line spoken by an aged Lou Andreas-Salomé (Nicole Heesters) to new friend and potential biographer Ernst Pfeiffer (Matthias Lier) upon his praise-fueled declaration that the way she lived her life — her freedom — was a touchstone for modern feminism. Her reply is, “Nonsense. What’s changed for us women since then?” It’s not presented as a jaded reaction or one specifically attached to the era in which she spoke it (the 1930s), though, because you could say the same today and not be wrong. Yes, women do have it better, but the world has still not found its way towards true equality. See #GamerGate, the Wahlberg/Williams pay disparity on All the Money in the World, and the struggles endured by the women in your life.

I kept returning to this line as Cordula Kablitz-Post’s film Lou Andreas-Salomé, The Audacity to be Free advanced because...

A boldly unconventional woman gets a crushingly conventional biopic with “Lou Andreas-Salomé, The Audacity to Be Free.” Such a heavy-handed title fits the film perfectly, far more than the original English-language handle, “In Love With Lou,” which confusingly made the movie sound like a sitcom. In her feature debut, director and co-writer Cordula Kablitz-Post clearly decided that Andreas-Salomé, famed author, philosopher and psychoanalyst, needed to be treated not just with kid gloves, but with pristine laminated mitts, robbing her subject of humor, let alone the charm that bewitched the likes of Friedrich Nietzsche, Rainer Maria Rilke and Sigmund Freud. This one’s strictly for audiences who love historical name-dropping; German box office following its June 2016 opening was negligible.

Kablitz-Post set herself the admirable task of rescuing Andreas-Salomé from being relegated to the role of muse, recognizing that her name is more often featured as an adjunct to famous men rather...