The story of 'Suite Francaise' has overtones of Captain Corelli, as it focuses on the complex relationships between the women of an occupied country (in this case France) and their occupiers. The novel it is based on was actually written during the war by a French woman who did not survive it, and discovered and published only many decades later. Unfortunately, the film is rather flat, and feels morally simplified. The use of English throughout obscures any differences in local culture that might have enriched the over-familliar resistance v Nazis narrative, while Kristen Scott-Thomas is wasted, not for the first time, by being cast in the role of mean hag (the two heroines, needless to say, are both young and conventionally pretty). The closing credits, revealing the story of the story, were more interesting to me than the tale itself.
Review of Suite Française
