Dir. Jean-Paul Salome,
France, 2008, 117 mins, French with subtitles Cast: Sophie Marceau, Julie Depardieu, Marie Gillain Review by Carol Allen Salome's film celebrates
the contribution of France’s women to the resistance in the Second World
War. After her husband is executed by the occupying Nazis,
resistance worker Louise (Marceau) flees to London, where
she is recruited by British intelligence to lead a mission
into France to rescue a British agent before he cracks under
torture and reveals his knowledge of the impending D-Day
landings. Apart from her brother Pierre (Julien Boisellier),
she chooses an all female team of five, not all of whom are
willing to serve, until Louise leans on them. Suze (Gillain)
is a showgirl and former lover of the German counter-intelligence
head Colonel Heindrich (Moritz Bleibreu). Gaaëlle (Déborah
François) although naïve and inexperienced, is
an explosives expert. Jeanne (Depardieu) is a proven killer,
whom Louise gets out of jail for the mission. And Maria (Maya
Sansa) is a Jewish Italian contessa, a wireless operator
for the resistance, with whom they link up, when they are
parachuted into occupied France. Once they are there their
bosses in London add an even more dangerous element to the
operation, instructing them to assassinate Heindrich, who
already suspects too much about the Normandy invasion plan. This is purely a period piece with
no direct connection to the contemporary world and while
not quite in the class of other, older movies featuring
resistance heroines, such as “Odette” or “Carve Her Name with Pride”,
it is a strong and well told story of courage with effective
moments of tension and some disturbing torture scenes. Partly
because of its subject it comes over as a bit old fashioned
in style but feels authentic in its recreation of its wartime
setting and provides good roles for its actresses, who all
seize their opportunities. Depardieu (daughter of Gerard)
shines in particular as the uncooperative prostitute, who
is reluctantly press ganged into the operation but then proves
her fighting mettle. There's little room for humour amongst
all the heroism, apart from the possibly unintentional smiles
raised by the English officers in London speaking really
badly accented French to their Gallic colleagues - perhaps
another aspect of the period, in that they probably mostly
did in those days, bearing in mind the traditional English
reluctance to speak any language other than their native
tongue.
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