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The second half of Antonin Baudry’s two-film French historical epic (adapted from a Julian Jackson historical tome) ramps up the rollicking action spectacles. From the opening shot of tires crunching through the desert, which wouldn’t be out of place in a Mad Max film, the message is clear: this isn’t a polite teatime vision of World War II.
It’s January, 1943. A tense and elegant cross-cutting sequence, typical of the pacy and propulsive storytelling as a whole, shows the different kinds of battles the French are waging across the world. In occupied Lyon, a French resistance wireless specialist Livia (Anamaria Vartolomei) is watching a man in a phone box. In the Libyan desert, Gaullist general Philippe Leclerc (a never more dashing Niels Schneider) leads a military ambush.
Meanwhile, from the Anfa Hotel in Casablanca, Winston Churchill (Simon Russell Beale) and Franklin D Roosevelt (Campbell Scott) have requested the company of Free French leader Charles de Gaulle (Simon Abkarian), whose rise to power as figurehead for the resistance formed the basis of film one.
They want him to bury the hatchet with Vichy General Giraud (Thierry Lhermitte), the better to direct all energy at the common Nazi enemy. Offering light relief, in the mode of two bitchy aunties, Churchill and FDR speak in bon mots, a raised eyebrow all but audible in their voices. ‘You’re like Frankenstein, afraid of his own monster,’ says the American president. He might have an ulterior motive for trying to tame de Gaulle as confirmed when a blueprint for a temporary US military occupation of France, aka AMGOT (Allied Military Government of the Occupied Territories) surfaces.
This isn’t a polite teatime vision of World War II
Abkarian carries himself with an air of suspicion that’s as warranted as it is comical. Equality resistant to British politesse and American smarm, he makes short work of an eavesdropping device in his hotel room.
Baudry’s major achievement is to keep the story moving for a sprawling cast within international civilian, political and military settings without once forgetting that he is making big screen entertainment. The MVPs are Schneider and Vartolomei (break-out star of Audrey Diwan’s 2021 Golden Lion winner Happening), both playing characters more comfortable with deeds than words.
A seeming suicide mission led by Leclerc and his L Division against German tanks is a standout sequence: taut, heartstopping and visceral. And it’s more than just technical virtuosity, thanks to Schneider’s emotional connection to the stakes of a Free France. There is a throughline between his faithful state of mind and Livia at home, punching out vital communications to her comrades as the Gestapo close in.
As a supporting character says in one mic drop moment: ‘It seems like being French is complicated these days.’ This arch perspective on history combined with a contempt towards countrymen who collaborate with Nazis makes this a modern movie in classic film style.
In UK and Ireland cinemas Fri Sep 18.