Strayed

The last retro: Parisian refugees find refuge and strange companions in Strayed

By Anthony Allison

If the contemplative mood evoked by the 60th anniversary of D-Day has yet to wear off, the latest French film to deal with the desperate, early days of World War II--the last conflict in which bellicose Americans were incontrovertibly the good guys--should prove welcome.

In the immortal, stentorian words of Casablanca's opening voiceover narration, "With the coming of the second world war," and the German occupation of France, "a tortuous, roundabout refugee trail sprang up." Framed by haunting archive images of fleeing French soldiers, the opening sequence of Strayed quickly makes it clear we're right in the middle of that June 1940 exodus, as desperate Parisians head southward at a snail's pace, ahead of advancing German forces.

Among them is widowed schoolteacher Odile Chambert (Emmanuelle Béart) and her two children, 13-year-old Philippe (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet) and 7-year-old Cathy (Clémence Meyer). When a Stuka dive bomber strafes the refugee column, Odile and the kids flee into a nearby forest with a surly young stranger, Yvan (Gaspard Ulliel), who reluctantly agrees to help them. This unusually resourceful 17-year-old gradually reveals some useful survival skills, which include looting dead bodies, catching fish, chickens and rabbits, and breaking into a house, lost in the countryside, where the hapless quartet takes refuge. "It's a strange prison," Odile says of the large, creepy home, still decorated with the possessions of its absent owners, a Jewish musician and his wife. "I've never had this much space before."

Strayed--whose French title, Les égarés, is better translated as "The Lost Ones"--is no Casablanca. But like Jean-Paul Rappeneau in Bon voyage, albeit with a much smaller canvas, critic-turned-filmmaker André Téchiné effectively evokes the panic and chaos of the German invasion, before settling into the claustrophobic setting of his chamber piece (based on Gilles Perrault's novel The Man with the Gray Eyes), and its principal focus--the edgy relationship that develops between the numbed widow and her enigmatic protector.

Béart, reuniting with the director of 1991's J'embrasse pas (I Don't Kiss), retains her trademark pout and imperious air of hostility throughout, rejecting her handsome, horny admirer's inappropriate attentions whilst increasingly depending on Yvan for her family's survival. Odile only cracks into a smile when a pair of French soldiers (Jean Fornerod and Samuel Labarthe), heading home after their army's ignominious defeat, stop off for a polite social visit.

Quite why Odile takes this sudden infusion of testosterone as the cue to rush out into the dark night and get naked with Yvan is left unexplained. Put it down to the close, Freudian link between Thanatos and Eros--or the way the threat of imminent death would make any respectable, 1940s French femme want to rush into the bushes and engage in gratuitous anal intercourse with the nearest horny teenager.

Somewhat more convincing is the exquisitely sensitive depiction of the mother-son relationship. The miraculously precocious, preternaturally mature Leprince-Ringuet effortlessly adopts the competent grown-up role, as Philippe's maman seemingly teeters on the verge of war-induced nervous breakdown.

Although Téchiné belatedly includes an explanation of Yvan's background, plus a bitter, sideways glance at a Nazi propaganda poster ("Abandoned populations? Trust the German soldier!"), his slice-of-life drama peters out into a sad sort of nonending. No need, here, for some climactic, Private Ryan showdown, with Yvan sacrificing himself to defend Odile and the kids against the invading Jerry hordes. In French movies, as in life, the loose ends are left messily, realistically untied.