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Matthias Schoenaerts and Michelle Williams love across the divide in this disappointing French Occupation epic |
Director: Saul Dibb
Cast: Michelle Williams (Lucile Angellier), Kristin Scott
Thomas (Madame Angellier), Matthias Schoenaerts (Oberleutnant Bruno van Falk),
Sam Riley (Benoit), Ruth Wilson (Madeleine), Margot Robbie (Celine), Lambert
Wilson (Viscount de Montmort), Harriet Walter (Viscountess de Montmort), Clare
Holman (Marthe), Alexandra Maria Lara (Leah), Tom Schilling (Oberleutnant Kurt
Bonnet), Eric Godon (Monsieur Joseph), Deborah Findlay (Madame Joseph)

The short summary of the novel’s richness and complexity provided
by this film can’t really compete. Based on the second of the two novels, the
story takes place in a small French village in 1940. Following the arrival of
the Germans, officers are billeted in people’s homes: Lucile Angellier
(Michelle Williams) and her mother-in-law (Kristin Scott-Thomas) are assigned
sensitive musician Bruno van Falk (Matthias Schoenaerts), while their
neighbours, farmers Benoit and Madeleine (Sam Riley and Ruth Wilson), are
forced to accommodate bullying officer Kurt Bonnet (Tom Schilling). As hostilities
between the French residents and the German occupiers grow, so does the
attraction between Lucile and Bruno, but Bonnet’s pursuit of Madeleine
threatens to ignite the simmering tensions in the community.
Suite Française manages to turn its promising material
into a conventional, chocolate box wartime romance – you can’t help but think
that it does a great deal of disservice to the original novel. It’s filmed in
an unremarkable style (there are at best 1-2 imaginatively done shots and
sequences) and poorly paced. With its short runtime (barely more than an hour
and a half), it constantly feels rushed. Quite simply it’s a story about
simmering tensions in a confined environment – it needed more time for us to
get a sense of the drama building, of the resentments between the Germans and
the French growing. Because the film is so short we don’t get that at all.
Most notably, in a film about a romance between a French
woman and a German officer, there is no sense at all of the risks that French
women who started relationships with German officers were running. Besides a
few small throw away lines, there is no sense of the physical danger and the
social stigma that would be applied to these women. Instead, the tension of
Lucile falling for Bruno seems to be based more on whether her mother-in-law
will discover that she’s considering cheating on her (absent, unfaithful)
husband. Even Celine the promiscuous farmgirl (a wasted Margot Robbie in a
terrible wig) doesn’t seem to be running any risks of reprisals from the villagers
when she’s banging a German officer in the woods.
This, however, is where the film’s rushing undermines it. If
it had allowed us to develop a sense of the resentment, shame and loathing the
occupied French felt for their German oppressors, a feeling of the whole town
being willing to close doors on anyone they perceive as being too close to
the Germans, we could have felt a real
danger for Lucile in flirting with a dalliance with Bruno. As well as giving
the situation a bit of stakes, it would have made it a lot more emotionally
engaging too. We could have witnessed her inner conflict at considering a
romance with the enemy, and the emerging feelings between them would have had
the conflict of a forbidden love. Instead the film rushes us as quickly as it
can towards getting Bruno and Lucile into a passionate clinch, at times taking
giant unsupported leaps forward in their relationship, so when it arrives it
packs no punch.
This passionate clinch undermines the film. If it wasn’t
going to take the time to really build the relationship through lingering
glances and brief moments, convincingly charting the journey from hostility and
suspicion to a forbidden attraction, it should have cut the relationship down
to being something that tempts them both but which they cannot express. Have
these two recognise a deep bond between them, a bond that in another time would
have brought them together but cannot in the time of war. It’s a film where the
only physical contact between them should feel like a window on what might have
been – not a passionate locking of lips and sexy fondle or two. Think how much
more affecting that might have been.
It would also have fit the structure of the film far better.
As Lucile finally finds herself having to choose a side – deciding whether to
help a renegade hunted by the Germans or not – her decision to sacrifice her
chance of love with Bruno might have worked much better. Similarly, Bruno
having to revert to the soldier taking responsibility for the growing persecution
of the villagers would have been more affecting. (It further doesn’t help that
the film doesn’t give time for Williams and Schoenaerts to build up an
effective chemistry.) By chucking them into a clinch as soon as it can, the
film undermines its message and also manages to make itself feel more like “Mills
and Boon in Occupied France” than the serious tragedy it could have been.
When the film finally focuses on the battles between the
French and Germans in its final third, it’s much more interesting than the
slightly tired romance. Here we get tensions, stakes, drama – and finally a sense
of the danger that being in this situation could have. After the rather soft
focus romance that comes before, it really seizes the attention.
Williams does a decent job as Lucile, Scott Thomas could
play her austere mother-in-law with hidden depths standing on her head (the
film fumbles the unexpected alliance between these characters late on).
Schoenaerts is a bit wasted in an underwritten role but does good work. The
best performances largely come from the second tier: Lambert Wilson is
excellent as the local Viscount who wants to try and work with the Germans but
quickly finds himself out of his depth. Harriet Walter is similarly strong as
his wife, as is Ruth Wilson.
But Suite Française
could have been so much better than the movie that it actually becomes. A film
that focused on the dangers of occupation and the tensions of a small community
would have been great. A film that rushes through a Romeo and Juliet style
romance, without building the sense of forbidden love, is a film that just
doesn’t work.
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