Taken from a presumably autobiographical novel by Marguerite Duras, best known Stateside from Alain Resnais’ HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR/’59, here’s a fascinating story of Paris near the end of Nazi Occupation, complicated by romantic collisions among the Communist French resistance. But under irregular feature film writer/director Emmanuel Finkiel, you’ve got to dig that story out for yourself. Was he trying to ape the groundbreaking non-linear design & intellectual wanderings of HIROSHIMA, or does it simply reflect the Duras novel? Whatever the intention, results disappoint in spite of a beautifully realized physical production and, especially, in its superb cast. Mélanie Thierry, a fit subject for a Vermeer painting, is the politically active wife whose husband has been arrested and is due for German deportation. Caught between the resistance group, with romantic tension developing from one of them (an intensely, almost comically cliché Frenchman, Benjamin Biolay) & the mixed messages they give on whether she should continue contact with French liaison Gestapo agent Benoît Magimel (is he truly trying to help her; using her to get at her underground friends; or merely hoping to bed her?), the film reaches a brief remarkable climax as German influence suddenly loses its grip; shown indirectly at a crowded bistro frequented by Nazi officers and their French mistresses. A case of subdued panic, brilliantly sketched, as a change in power suddenly becomes obvious between courses. If only the rest of the film worked on this level. Unfortunately, Finkiel plays his film very close, very dark, very obscurely, often filming with a shallow depth of focus which keeps us from getting a feel of how things are connected, physically or emotionally. Self-sabotage the French Resistance knew all too well.
DOUBLE-BILL: Jean-Pierre Melville’s ARMY OF SHADOWS/’69, which only got Stateside distribution in 2006, remains the clear-eyed French Resistance story to see first.
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