Based on the well-regarded Joseph Kanon novel , this film stars a distracted , emotionally detached George Clooney as Jake Geismer , an American journalist who , following World War II , returns to Germany to check out the doings at Potsdam and find his lost love , Lena , a frau who , as played by a vamping Cate Blanchett , recalls Rainer Werner Fassbinder 's postwar heroine Veronika Voss by way of Carol Burnett .