Lucie Aubrac

First-rate acting and smooth direction make this personal recounting of controversial Resistance events well worth seeing. As with all films by Claude Berri, the storytelling is direct and the cinematography is both poignant and sensitive. Daniel Auteuil is great as usual. Carole Bouquet also contributes, albeit with less emotional range. The movie focuses as much on the love between Lucie and Raymond Aubrac as on the historical events surrounding them as they participate in the French Resistance to German occupation during World War II. The movie also contains powerful action scenes of escape and guerilla fighting (which the Germans considered terrorism at the time). Watch for a striking scene where Heino Ferch (as Klaus Barbie) tortures Auteuil (as Lucie's husband Raymond) to obtain information about Resistance leader "Max". Not only is this scene memorably acted and filmed, but it bears on a most controversial event in the history of the Resistance. The script follows a book by Lucie Aubrac that is ostensibly autobiographic. To this day, historians debate whether the Aubracs remained committed to the resistance or whether Raymond actually cracked under torture and betrayed resistance mastermind Jean Moulin ("Max"). Moulin was arrested soon after Raymond left prison and died a hero, refusing to speak under the torture of Klaus Barbie, the "Butcher of Lyons". These events and Barbie's much later in persona trial (1987) still rattle many people's understanding of the morals and history of France in the last sixty-plus years.

This film is an excellent tribute to the bravery of the men and women of the French Resistance during the Second World War. The film revolves around Lucie and her attempts to rescue her husband, after he is arrested by the Gestapo at a Resistance meeting. This film is indeed a testimony to Lucie and Raymond's relationship, but in my mind, the film serves equally as an insight into France during the occupation and the political state at the time. An excellent film. - Jonno

Lucy Aubrac (Carole Bouquet) is a woman in love with her husband Raymond (Daniel Auteuil). He is an important member of the French resistance and arrested with his friends in a meeting after being betrayed. Lucy will try to rescue him from the Gestapo prison using all the possible ways. A beautiful romance in the Second World War, based on a true story. A correct direction and good performances of the cast make this movie a worthwhile entertainment. My vote is seven.

While not on a par with Berri's remarkable 2 film epic "Jean de Florette" and Manon of the Spring", this is a fairly engrossing, romantic, if somewhat romanticized true story of a married pair of resistance fighters in WWII France. Both Daniel Auteil and Carole Bouquet are solid as the couple, especially in their scenes together, which nicely capture the erotic tension of a married couple deeply in love, whose passion is not just physical, but fed by the fact they admire each other as human beings as well. It's also nice to see a war film where the woman pulls off the heroics to try and save her man, rather than the other way around.

But the darkness of occupied France seems a but sanitized here, the awful price paid by those fighting back and their innocent families is alluded too but never fully dealt with, and there is something a bit light weight about it in the end. Bouquet keeps everything so hidden when not around Autiel that she becomes somewhat opaque.

It's always interesting, but a bit stolid. Rarely truly tense, frightening or emotional. Still it's a good, decent, involving film, if not a great one.

Claude Berri began filming this movie in 1996 with Daniel Auteuil

and Juliette Binoche. Berri and the headstrong Binoche came to

(creative) blows over script changes. He wanted to make it more of

a love story, she wanted it to remain more factual and so in a move

unheard of in French cinema he fired his leading actress, who

also happened to be the biggest French star in the world. A few

monthe later she won an Oscar for The English Patient and berri

recast his movie with Carole Bouquet in the lead.

Bouquet is a talented actress, but not in the same league as the

extremely gifted Binoche. Auteuil as usual gives a fine

performance, but the whole excersise seems leaden down by

romanticism.

Binoche and Auteuil went on to star together in Leconte's

altogether better La Veuve de Saint-Pierre