La chambre des officiers

This could have been an easy soppy boring film, but it's not, absolutely not ! It's a film full of humanity, of hope, love, and confidence in life. Of course, many scenes are tragic, unbearable but those "broken faces" can also make us laugh and believe in life... It's also a very interesting historical testimony of those hidden victims of the 1st World War... and though the film never enter into political debates, it's a real plea for peace. A great great film !

Having found so much recent French cinema disappointing, I am always pleased to record the discovery of something really fine. Although "The Officers' Ward" belongs to the category of lengthy literary adaptaions, it is infinitely better than examples such as "Germinal", "Les Destinees Sentimentales" or the much hyped Pagnol films which I found particularly over-rated. An anti-war film dealing with facial disfigurement incurred in time of conflict, it chronicles one man's pain and his long period of adjustment to the way he physically presents to the world. In a sense his wound is inflicted not so much by being engaged in battle (he is on a reconnaissance sortie) but by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The other irony is that in the few scenes when we get to know the officer, Adrien, before his injury, he is presented in a none too sympathetic way as a rather boorish and selfish womaniser. In a way his disfigurement offers him a chance of redemption and it is his journey towards this state that gives the film its considerable power. Not that the end result is perfect: there is rather too much concentration on peripheral detail. What is in essence a chamber film is too often broadened out to encompass for example the grand sweep of the journey of the injured from the field to the hospital or to comment on the social injustice of the special treatment of the officer class compared with the rank-and-file. Perhaps too much concentration on conveying atmosphere, however beautifully done, detracts from what in the hands of a director as austere as Bresson for instance would have been an undoubted masterpiece. Nevertheless there is sufficient in Francois Dupeyron's work to assure it a place among the "top ten" of its year, the skill for instance with which the director only allows us imagine what Adrien must look like by observing the reactions on the faces of those who see him, so that by the time half-way through that we are actually given a glimpse we know exactly what to expect as we did in the case of "The Elephant Man". That and two wonderfully moving scenes, one where the three disfigured patients in the officers' ward, who until then have suffered in their own private worlds, suddenly become aware of each other and another where Adrien on his release into the the outside world manages to transform a little girl's fear at his appearance into something approaching fun by making their encounter in a train into a game. In moments such as these the film touches greatness.

'How Can You Live With Yourself When You Cannot Look At Yourself...' This is a superb film. It makes me sad and angry. This is one of the great classic anti war movies. When you like Al quiet on the western front, Gallipoli and La vie et rien d'autre you most definitely should see this film!!! Beautiful cinematography, lighting, camera, great acting and story / script. The director (François Dupeyron) made a moving picture. I hadn't seen a movie about world war I victims that have disfigured faces. But I read books about it. The look of Frankensteins monster is based upon these

men. The horror of this world war has had is effect on not only film, but art and daily life as well. This was the first war with weapons of mass destruction,

revolutionary weapons. But medicine and surgery advanced as well. So this war has created living monsters. This movie shows how these monsters survived

during and after the war.

SUPERB FILM!!! I rated 9.

Géraldine goes to war again: this time it's the WWI and the movie is pretty bad: first of all, it's shot in Sepia and it's just awful! It's not because old pictures turned yellow that this past world must be seen that way (or in black and white either)! Then, i'm a bit shocked by this loose Geraldine, who spent a night with this soldier as soon as she left another on a train for the war zone! At the end, she appears for 6 minutes but she was cute in this old fashion! Except for her appearance, the movie is totally depressive as it's a Darkman getting rehabilitated in a hospital room: any fans ???

Beautiful film, after a difficult (almost unbearable) first half hour in WWI Parisian hospital. Beautiful costumes and settings, great acting...very touching at times.

Really modern with its theme around the physical appearance and the way we accept ourselves and the other's look.

A great tribute to the "gueules cassées" (broken faces) of the World War I.

I rank it among the David Lynch's "Elephant Man", or Van Dormael "the eighth day", both festival winners. No less... 9/10