- A young Scottish woman joins the French Resistance during World War II to rescue her Royal Air Force boyfriend who is lost in France.
- Charlotte (Cate Blanchett), a young Scottish woman, who has studied in France, is living in London during World War II. Within a few weeks she falls in love with a young pilot and is recruited by the Secret Service to act as a courier for the French Resistance. However, her mission behind enemy lines becomes a personal mission to find her lover who has been shot down. Assigned to a Communist Resistance group, she encounters acts of betrayal from sometimes unexpected sources, but meets the violence of war and her own disappointment with hope.—<johnno.r@xtra.co.nz>
- In 1942, a young Scot, Charlotte Gray (Cate Blanchett), travels to London to take a job as a medical receptionist for a Harley Street doctor. On the train she talks to a man who enters her compartment, where he "interviews" her and gives her his card with the date, time and address of a book launch on the back. Despite the war, social life in London is in full swing and her friends convince her to go. While there she soon meets Flight Lieutenant Peter Gregory, but is interrupted by the man from the train, who urges her to meet some people.
The temporary nature of life at the time is epitomized when she quickly loses her heart to Peter. They speak on the nature of war and bravery, Charlotte tells him she thinks she is being asked to try out for some secret organization, Peter tells her not to get involved in the war. Peter tells her his leave is over and he is to take part in operations over France for the next few weeks. Charlotte joins the SOE and is seconded to FANY with the rank of Driver. She completes her initial training and is on leave when news comes back to Charlotte that Gregory's plane has gone down and he is missing in action.
Charlotte spent much of her childhood in France and speaks the language fluently, which got her noticed by the SOE. She signs up for operations in France and is dropped in with two other men. Her mission is to complete a test run; a handover of some radio valves.
Eventually her cover becomes dangerously close to being blown, so she settles down as housekeeper to an aging and no longer inspired painter, Levade, the father of her main resistance contact, Julien. She also helps to conceal two Hebrew children, Andre, and Jacob, after their parents are arrested and deported, and as the year progresses, we learn about the steadily growing oppression of the Hebrews in France with complicity by the Vichy French government.
Levade is interviewed about his Hebrew ancestry, and when he stays silent, Julien admits the Hebrew ancestry of both his father and him in order to save the two little boys. Levade is then packed off to the prison camp/transfer station, but Julien is not taken, as he is not Hebrew enough, but his father is, according to the law.
Following betrayal by the duplicitous schoolmaster Renech, the two boys are taken anyway. Charlotte writes a letter to them and signs it from their mother, knowing how much they miss her. She runs to pass it through a hole in the wall of the train cargo box they share with Julien's father and many others, all saying goodbye to loved ones running along with the train. At the end of the war, she is reunited with, now-Squadron Leader Peter Gregory, but she explains that she has grieved for him since she was told that he had died.
At the end of the film, Charlotte returns to France and to Julien. Though the film leaves the fate of Julien's father and the two little boys up to the viewer to piece together, the book makes it clear that all three died in the concentration camp.
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