Back in the Summer of '44 — Female Agents Review

I went to see Female Agents (Femmes de l'Ombre, or "Women of the Shadows" in French) partly to keep on track with my cinema-going, partly because it was French and I do like to at least feign language abilities and partly because the trailer made it looked as though it was about sex as much as about war and death and stuff. To be fair, it was quite gripping, even if part of the film irritated me.

Sophie BondGirl plays Louise, a young, French widow whose brother Pierre convinces her to take part in an SOE mission to rescue a convenient plot device geologist from a hospital in the south of France. He has BIG NOLEDGES about the planned Normandy landings and so the Germans are pretty keen to get hold of him, so it falls to Pierre, Louise and a motley crew of three women they bribe, seduce and blackmail (respectively) into helping to rescue Monsieur Le Geologue. The W Team contains a convicted murderess, a timid, religious girl with a penchant for blowing stuff up, and a nightclub dancer who fled to Angleterre after she left her now-Nazi lover at the altar. Only brawn, brains, bravery and boobs can bring about the success of this mission, clearly.

Off they fly to the south of France in search of the geologist. He isn't looking too good but hasn't cracked under the torturous hand of Colonel Heindrich just yet and certainly isn't telling Heindrich (who suspects that the Allies are planning a landing but can't quite convince his boss of this fact and is hoping to take the geologist with him to Berlin as proof) exactly what those strange looking concrete blocks on various Normandy beaches are or why he was collecting sand so late at night (emergency exfoliating facial?).

Not to worry, geologist dude - here come the Spice Girls, disguised variously as nurses and dancers. Baby Spice sets to work on filling the Nazis' cars with explosives, Ginger (daughter of Le Depardieu) and Posh (the beautiful Marie Gillain) are going to be the entertainment for the night (some war hospital that provides dancing girls for the patients). Scary (Louise — well, she is pretty scary in her coolness and drive) heads off to find the English patient (sadly, no Ralph Fiennes) and preferably to kill Heindrich at the same time. Their contact at the hospital — Maria (Sporty)  turns the hospital's radio system into a useless mess of snipped wires. Also, Pierre does some good things because obviously, women couldn't be left completely to themselves on such an important mission.

There are some explosions and shit and in all the smoke and confusion, the ladies manage to get themselves and the geologist out of the hospital and into their getaway vehicle without getting caught. Heindrich is left behind. "You're despicable!" he hisses in the gals' fleeting direction when he realises that one of those women has killed his transport and another has buggered the radio. Women should know their limits, OK?

Geologist isn't in too good a state but he does manage to pass some cryptic messages onto Pierre before they reach their plane pick up point, where Pierre announces that actually, the girls can't go back to Blighty just yet — there is just one little, tiny thing they need to do in Paris. They're not very happy about this but they aren't really left with much choice so on the train to Paris it is, and there they learn all about friendship, betrayal, trust, courage, self-belief, loyalty and various other abstract nouns.

I felt the movie rather shot itself in the foot during the dénouement, though. Having spent ninety minutes on a period of a few days, the director skims liberally over the next year in about ten minutes with some Dramatic Montages and real, genuine video footage of how the Yanks won WWII with a chirpy American voiceover (I wasn't sure if the French director put this in to be ironic, given how the whole of the rest of the film was all about the great efforts of the French resistance — more specifically the women — and the Brits. The only explanation for this could be that Jean-Paul Salomé was mocking the American habit of ignoring the role played by everyone else in WWII). The "sweet" coda and crappy "here's what happened next, summarised in a couple of random captions" really irritated me and could probably have been left out because they seemed to miss the point, for me, and seemed to clash too much with the ideas and mood of the rest of the film.

Nonetheless, the cast is attractive and charismatic enough to make Female Agents an interesting tale of Girl Power à la 1944. The male actors were all rather weak but then, they didn't really have much to do, so this is probably intentional. Certainly worth a peek but not at the expense of some of the other films out at the moment.

A Savage City, Yet It Had Such Tenderness — The Visitor Review

I have been rather neglectful, lately, of my non-resolution to go to the cinema more often this year, mainly because I haven't been around very much, although it's also true that there haven't been many films on that I wanted to see (other than the reissue of Jules et Jim that I am really annoyed to have missed.

This week, the roster is looking more promising and I went to see The Visitor this afternoon. The cinema was absolutely packed — I hadn't realised the film was going to be so popular but then it only opened yesterday. I wasn't convinced that I was going to like it based on the description on the Arts's website and I hadn't read any reviews (I prefer to go in with a blank slate) but it was set in New York, which pushed me over the edge. I was pleasantly surprised because it was sweet and touching without ever being too maudlin, as well as having moments of comedy and tension and with some good performances from the lead actors, none of whom I'd heard of.

Walter is a widowed professor at Yale Connecticut College and he seems to have lost his way a little since the death of his wife, a celebrated pianist. He is trying to learn the piano himself, presumably to try to feel some connection to the wife, but isn't doing very well and dismisses his fourth teacher in a row after another bad lesson. He is cold with and unmoved by the students in the one class he teaches and doesn't seem to have contributed much to the latest academic paper he has co-authored. However, when the other author goes into labour, Walter is (grudgingly) sent to a conference at NYU to present the paper himself.

Luckily, he has a nice apartment in Manhattan (as well as the huge Connecticut mansion, which is his main residence) and even more luckily, he appears not to need to sub-let it, even though he hasn't been there in months. That's odd, though: there are fresh flowers in the vase on the table and - oh shit! - there is a woman in the bath! It turns out that a young, immigrant couple have been living in the apartment for about a month after it was rented to them by someone called Ivan, whom Walter doesn't know.

After initially attacking Walter, assuming he was an intruder, the couple are very apologetic and timid and pack their things and leave right away but they accidentally leave behind a cute photo of the two of them. Walter sees them at a store across the road and hurries over to return the photo, only to discover that they don't really have anywhere else to stay and he offers to let them stay at the apartment for a few days, until they find somewhere else. Very proud, the two initially refuse but eventually accept and soon he is enjoying Zainab's (the woman's) Senegalese cooking and going to Tarek's djembe gigs.

Walter and Tarek bond and before long, Tarek is teaching Walter to play the djembe, which he seems to pick up much more quickly than the piano. Slowly, Walter's coldness and efforts to distance himself from the world begin to break down and he and Tarek each have a lot to learn from the other. But, after taking Walter to play the drums with a big crew in Central Park one day, they catch the subway back home and the big drums lead to Tarek getting stuck in the turnstile and pushing his way through. Along come the cops, who take Tarek off to the station, even though Walter asserts that Tarek has done nothing wrong. Later, Zainab reveals that actually, she and Tarek aren't exactly legal hence big oh noes and, indeed, Tarek is taken off to a detention centre.

Zainab, who never really gelled so well with Walter, moves out and goes to stay with a cousin but Walter can't switch off and motivate himself to care about his old life — the one where he was barely teaching, barely researching, barely even writing his book; barely living, in fact. 

And no, he isn't going to go and jack all of that in to go and play the djembe in the park all day long but his encounters with Tarek and Zainab certainly give Walter something to think about — especially given that his research seems to be on global development policy, where it's clear he has spent many years thinking about these issues on a global level but without ever thinking about what they mean for the individuals they affect.

Obviously, the film raises wider issues of what it means to be a citizen — an American or a New Yorker, even — and whether immigration policies (particularly post-9/11) are sensible or fair (clearly, the movie comes down more strongly on one side than the other here). However, the relationship between Walter and Tarek is interesting and powerful even when considered separately from this perspective. 

Tarek is the younger of the two but seems to have an old soul; he knows what makes him happy and appears to appreciate the things that matter most in life. He teaches Walter to be open to new experiences and not to follow, automatically, the path most travelled. There is, of course, plenty of time for Walter to repay this, especially after Tarek's mother comes to the city from her home in Michigan.

Some scenes are quite awkward - especially those between Walter and Zainab but the awkwardness i well acted and generally has a hint of humour rather than cringeworthiness. In all, a thoughtful and thought-provoking film, which is, by turns, poignant and funny, serious and sweet.