Les égarés

Andre Techini's "Strayed," or perhaps more accurately, "the lost" or "displaced" people, has a simple premise. A school teacher, whose husband was killed in the early days of the war, takes her two children and flees Paris in the face of the Nazi advance on the City of Lights. In the countryside, as they are stuck in a massive traffic jam made up of refugees, they are strafed by German fighters in a harrowing scene that reminds you a little of the bombardment of the advancing troops in "All Quiet on the Western Front."

They lose their car and all their possessions, but are rescued by a strange, resourceful teenager who becomes their guide, companion, but in some ways, their charge, as they try to hide out -- from the war itself.

This is the kind of film that most American audiences wouldn't like, because after that strafing run, not another shot is fired, not another blow struck. The story that plays out is about the main characters getting to know, tolerate and even grow found of one another, but then finding themselves faced with some uncomfortable choices.

Gregoire LaPrince-Ringuet is very good as the 13-year-old boy of the family who might have been elevated to the man of the house status, had not the mysterious teenager arrived on the scene. But rather than show resentment, he winds up doing everything possible to become the older boy's friend.

Gaspard Ulliel is quite effective as the older boy, a sort of domesticated wild child. But the film belongs to Emmanuelle Beart, who plays the mother.

Beart's character is fascinating. She has lost her husband, her home, everything she has except her two kids. She is on the road with them, dead broke, dead tired and close to despairing. But of course, she is a tower of strength, right, magnificently holding her family together in the face of personal disaster and global chaos.

Actually, no. Beart's character is depicted as a woman clearly out of her depth who can barely keep herself together in the face of the problems confronting her. She's like a ticking time bomb, ready to completely fall apart at any moment. The only thing that holds her together is her rigid, school teacher training that allows her to continue to run her fugitive family as if she is maintaining order in a classroom during an unplanned fire drill.

And it works. Beart comes off neither as the typical weak, frightened woman Hollywood movies presented so often in the 50s, nor the kick butt superwoman that we see so often in American films today. Beart is so frightened during the air attack that she pees in her pants. She is so in need of structure to take her mind off things that she starts cleaning the windows of the abandoned home they later hide in.

But she is also together enough to handle a couple of French soldiers who drift by, easily dealing with them when her self-appointed teenage protector is so unsettled by these two potential rapists he can't even stay in the house with them.

Beart underplays her role, which features spartan dialogue to begin with. But there is a lot going on for her and you see it all playing out in her eyes, and behind her eyes as well.

It is another great performance from this French star and the film would be worth seeing just to study her acting, even if she were not one of the screen's great beauties.

A journey of a woman with her 2 children accompanied by a young mysterious wanderer who tried to flee the war, but the tragic will somewhat jostled against this bucolic experience.

An intimist French film that typically depicts the emotions and mixed and complex relations between the protagonists.

Pictures are nice, actors are moving but with a dull script and so little stake, the films fails to catch you completely. Though slow, the film is never boring, it is very pleasant to watch.

The film leaves you charmed and confused, you would love to like it, but it definitely lacks appeal..(6 out of 10)

Odile, a schoolteacher war widow flees Paris with her 13YO son and 6YO daughter as the German army advances upon the city, and on the way she coldly rejects a wounded soldier's desperate pleas for a lift. Later, when the column of refugees are strafed by German fighters and her car is destroyed, they are rescued by a strange crew-cut young man, Yvan. Recognizing his talent for survival, the helpless mother and children attach themselves to him. They all move into a large abandoned house that he discovers in the remote countryside, whereupon the illiterate Yvan scavenges for food by trapping rabbits and stealing chickens from distant farms. Odile lies to her children to protect them from the horrors of war, but continues to distrust Yvan for his suspiciously obscure origins. Techine seems to portray each member of this displaced family selfishly engrossed in their own need, perhaps intending them to represent the fragmented French nation itself. When Odile asserts herself as the matriarch of this family, grudging bonds of affection begin to form - but the balance is upset when the outside world finally intrudes on their pastoral idyll, and the characters contradict their earlier behavior in strangely inconsistent ways. The resourceful Yvan's mysterious background is eventually revealed, only for Techine to impose an especially counter-intuitive destiny upon him. "Les Egares" is beautifully shot and is never less than absorbing, but the characters' emotional detachment becomes an obstacle to intense involvement in their story.

Even when he's not in top form, Téchiné makes movies that tell you more per frame than just about anyone around. In this case, he's using a screenplay that is just a little too glib, with a closing plot twist well beneath his league. But his handling of young actors is, as always, impeccable, and his ability to convey the confusion and uncertainty of life as it is lived, moment to moment, remains unsurpassed. The opening scenes of ordinary families fleeing Paris and being strafed on the open road by the Luftwaffe are masterful, haunting and, alas, still and always timely. And you get several of what you always come back to Téchiné for: unforgettable portraits of wholly unique and credible human beings.

The film has been poohpoohed in France and as a result may never make into a proper U.S. release. Compared to a lot of what does get hurled out into the art-house market here, "Les Egarés" is a towering masterpiece and, for all its manifest imperfections, needs to be seen by serious moviegoers everywhere.

It's a pity André Téchiné's brilliant little movie, Strayed (Les Égarés) comes to America not long after Jean-Paul Rappeneau's Bon Voyage, which treats the same event, the French wartime flight from Paris to the countryside, in a much more buoyant, charming manner. The contrast may make the much lower-keyed Strayed look a bit drab. But it's an intense, haunting film and pure Téchiné with its sexy, somewhat ambiguous relationships and intense encounters across generations.

The sad-eyed, lovely Émmanuelle Béart is Odile, a recent war widow with a 13-year-old son, Philippe (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet), and a seven-year-old daughter, Cathy (Clémence Meyer), on the road with all the others, in their own auto. Then suddenly when the convoy they're in is strafed by stukas and bodies are lying around and their car's a mess and they don't know what to do, a youth named Yvan (Gaspard Ulliel) appears out of nowhere, leads them into the woods to safety, and finds a big abandoned house for them to stay in.

Yvan is a wild, lean young man with a hard body and sheared-off hair, like the brother Benoît Magimel played in Téchiné's 1996 Les Voleurs. Odile and her children are Paris people; they're brave but inept in these circumstances, and Yvan has survival skills they lack. Camping in the recently abandoned house, these people live for a few days as an unconventional family. Yvan is big brother, younger brother, husband, elder son, outcast, wild boy, protector, or provider to the others, alternatively indifferent and willing to do anything to stay with Odile.

The wartime context has been clearly established and we know this can't last. There are curious paradoxes. The household is mad, disturbed, yet idyllic and peaceful. Yvan is wise beyond his years, yet ignorant and uncivilized. It emerges that he can't read. Philippe is a weak child and looks up to and tries vainly to bond with Yvan. But he's more civilized than Yvan, more mature in moral sensibility. It's clear that Yvan's sense of property is vague and so are his origins. He tells a strange story about a friend who has died, but his background remains mysterious.

Strayed is as sad and brutal and incomprehensible as the war itself, and as such has more in common with Michael Haneke's apocalyptic Time of the Wolf (also just released in the US) than with Rappeneau's operatic, comedic, but ultimately hard to care about Bon Voyage. In Strayed, you don't have time as a viewer to prepare for anything, just like the characters. Suddenly Odile's car was hit and people nearby were dead. Suddenly a young man pulled Odile and her children off into the woods. Suddenly, after the odd idyll in the nice house has gone on for a few days, with Yvan catching rabbits for the others to eat, two French soldiers from Sedan appear and spend the night at the house. Suddenly when their awkward and threatening visit ends Odile and Yvan make love out in the dirt, like savages. Suddenly the whole interlude is ended and Yvan and the little family are separated. Yvan is taken away, and Odile and her children are in a refugee camp, little more than prisoners. Their moment of luxury and experimentation is over. C'est la guerre, Téchiné style.

It's not contemplative: it's so vivid and immediate that, were it not for the crowd scenes and Forties clothes you'd question if it has any period flavor, but it's touching and alive and it leaves you a little bit devastated – if you've been paying attention – with just a hint of what it's like to be marked by war's abrupt gifts and deprivations. Strayed works on a smaller scale than Téchiné's best films, but you feel the Téchiné style in every scene. However modest, this is a compelling and accomplished piece of work.