RENT OR BUY
The Oxford Times
.Parky_at_the_Pictures__DVD_14_1_2010_/
Jan 14 2010
UK
For a brief period around the turn of the century, Marseilles-based
auteur Robert Guédiguian had a voguish arthouse cachet. Notable for
their intelligence, economy and realist poetry, Marius et Jeannette
(1997), Ã~@ la place du coeur (1998), Ã~@ l’attaque! and La Ville est
tranquille (both 2000) were all acclaimed by British critics. Yet only
The Last Mitterand (2005) has since secured UK theatrical distribution,
with fine films like Marie-Jo and Her Two Lovers (2002), My Father
Is an Engineer (2004) and Lady Jane (2008) being consigned to the
festival circuit.
Comparisons with Army of Shadows (1969) clearly prompted the decision
to release Guédiguian’s latest offering, Army of Crime. But anyone
hoping for a powerhouse picture on a par with Jean-Pierre Melville’s
seminal study of the Maquis or another of Guédiguian’s intense
political provocations will be somewhat disappointed.
The infamous `Red Poster’ campaign conducted by the Vichy government
against the immigrant resistance movement Francs Tireurs et Partisans
de la Main d’Oeuvre Immigrée (FTP-MOI) had previously been recalled in
Frank Cassenti’s little-seen drama, L’Affiche rouge (1976). But while
Guédiguian, production designer Michel Vandestien and cinematographer
Pierre Milon ably recreate the look and feel of occupied France, the
fractured nature of the narrative prevents the action from gaining
the momentum that might have heightened the tension surrounding the
activities that led to the arrest and execution of pamphleteering
Armenian poet Simon Abkarian, Romanian revolutionary Olga Legrand,
Marxist Hungarian explosives expert Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet and
Polish-Jewish assassin, Robinson Stévenin.
Surprisingly for such a politicised film-maker, there is also a notable
lack of ideological debate, which might have rooted the reckless
heroism in something more tangible than the righteous revulsion felt at
the round-up of Jews at the Vélodrome d’Hiver in Paris and the Drancy
internment camp. But if Abkarian’s sudden transformation from pacifist
to machine-gunning opportunist strains credibility, the introduction
of collaborationist detective Jean-Pierre Darroussin shifts the focus
of the storyline on to his attempts to seduce Stévenin’s girlfriend,
Lola Naymark, in the hope that she will betray her comrades while
seeking to protect them.
Indeed, it’s the business of the plot that most consistently
undermines this noble attempt to reclaim the contribution made
by refugees to the Liberation from the `one nation’ propaganda of
Gaullist patriots. Guédiguian demonstrated a flair for interweaving
multiple strands in La Ville est tranquille. But he seems hampered
here by the weight of history, as he strives to make each passing
character seem significant. Moreover, he also struggles to find
enough for Virginie Ledoyen to do as Abkarian’s pugnacious wife,
while such regular members of his stock company as Ariane Ascaride
and Gérard Meylan are restricted to bit parts.
Army of Crime contains some striking set-pieces and moments of
sickening authenticity. But its chief achievement is to provide a
motivational counterbalance to the existential valour of Melville’s
romanticised guerillas and the perky pluck of the glamour gals
in Jean-Paul Salomé’s Female Agents. Perhaps more importantly,
however, this rather studious tribute to the unknown underground
offers a corrective to the dumbed-down antics depicted in such recent
Hollywood excursions to the Second World War as Tom Cruise’s vacuous
star vehicle, Valkyrie, and Quentin Tarantino’s eminently resistible
revisionist romp, Inglourious Basterds.