La douleur

War causes pain in many ways. La douleur focuses on one that usually goes unnoticed. It is a character study of Marguerite, a woman waiting for her husband who has been arrested by the Germans and nobody knows what happened to him. Is he alive? Is he dead? The only thing she can do is torturously wait without having any clue. She desperately tries to get a French agent's help, but deep inside she knows it's a vain attempt.

The movie succeeds in creating the surreal feeling of "freezing time". Days are endlessly passing by and she isn't living, she is just a detached observer. This effect is done through the extremely slow narrative, Melanie Thierry's performance, the camera work (e.g. Many closeups, or the scene where she looks herself in the mirror, an outsider in her own life).

SUM UP : you read the book and liked it ? -> GO see the movie! Not read or read and not liked? -> GO see another movie!

STORY The story is about a wife that has no information about the return of her husband that went to war. So she tries to find out what happend to him.

NOTHING BUT PAIN The film is full of pain, and is very slow, just l ike the book I heard. I would say that, while the crew might have done a great job turning the book into a move, the movie was not enjoyable: I go to movies to feel emotions, and I did not feel any but pain in this one. I had to leave the movie after 1H30 min because I was just losing my time.

RATING 4 because the cast was nice, and as said, the crew did a fine job given the book..

The book isn't an easy read, it feels like being trapped into the author's head: this can be a problem because entering another person's subjectivity is always tricky and a source of misunderstanding.

The movie suffers from the same problem and this is why I didn't really like it. The voice over is extremely pervasive (we're bordering audiobook territory here) while nothing, or almost nothing, happens on screen.

In short, watching this movie without having read the book would be a pointless experience imho.

"Memoir Of War" is a woman's picture in the true sense of the term. Women can understand the agony of waiting for their husband or other male relative to return from war, or in this case, from a concentration camp. Waiting and waiting and waiting - for some word, some hope, some encouragement. Daily trips to the train station provide no help as day after day goes by. Melanie Thierry is outstanding as Marguerite, who waits patiently for her husband to return. The war is over and she scans the returnees at the train station each day.

It is not a war picture in the strict sense of the term and there are no battle scenes, or even a fight worth mentioning. It is a character study ... but c'mon. Enough is enough. The film could have used a heavier hand in the cutting room, as it is about 30 minutes too long. I was beginning to hope he would show up dead or alive and end the interminable wait. I base my rating on the caliber of the acting performances, especially Ms. Thierry and Shulamit Adar, who plays a neighbor who comes to stay with her. But for these outstanding performances I would have opted for a six rating.

7/10 - Website no longer prints my star rating.

I've watched some rubbish/flawed films and have found something to help me work around whatever was wrong with them. This film had nothing. It was slow, and boring. The characters weren't interesting me and I didn't like the cinematography. The overall look of the film was drab and grey.