Director: Katell Quillévéré

Stars: Anaïs Demoustier, Vincent Lacoste, Morgan Bailey, Helios Karyo

Despite its jaunty title, French-writer Katell Quillévéré’s film is a maudlin and middlebrow decade-spanning drama. It begins effectively enough with archive footage of victory parades in France, as GIs and locals celebrate the end of the war, before jarringly cutting to disturbing images of female ‘collaborators’ who had had relations with German soldiers, stripped, having their hair shorn and being paraded through the streets to shame them. One of these females is Madeline (Demoustier), a pregnant woman who goes into hiding. Jump to two years later where Madeline is the mother to a little boy and waitressing in a hotel in Brittany. She has told her son Daniel (Karyo) that his father is dead, although she does not know if this is true. One of the customers is Francois (Lacoste) a soft-spoken intellectual. A muted and seemingly passion-free courtship follows. They marry and relocate to France where Francois is to study for an Archaeology PhD. Due to Francois’ ability to speak English, the duo get jobs running a club frequented by GIs. One of these is the handsome Black solider Jimmy (Bailey) who becomes a key figure in that episode of their lives. There is some potentially interesting material about identity here and the need for maintaining public appearances, but the drama is undone by poor execution and on-the-nose imagery, most notably a scene at the club involving masked guests. Bailey in particular struggles with a barely developed character, and the rushed chronology and telescoped storytelling and melodrama push this into soap opera territory.

David Willoughby

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