Female Agents
France 2008
Starring: Sophie Marceau, Moritz Bleibtreu
Director: Jean-Paul Salomé

AFTER so many decades of Second World War pictures, many film-makers now feel obliged to seek out fresh avenues – including, recently, an overdue focus on the oft-unsung distaff aspect of operations. The results have ranged from Gillian Armstrong’s lukewarm Charlotte Gray (2001) to Paul Verhoeven’s barnstorming Black Book (2006). Unfortunately the latest example of this particular sub-genre, Female Agents, is much closer in ambition and quality to the former than the latter.

It’s the story (loosely based on actual events) of five French women, recruited in 1944 by Allied forces to rescue a British geologist from a hospital in enemy-controlled territory. The quintet – led by resourceful Louise (Sophie Marceau) – find themselves up against the area’s head Nazi, Colonel Heindrich (Moritz Bleibtreu). And the stakes couldn’t be much higher, as the geologist knows crucial details about the planning for the Allies’ projected invasion of Normandy on June the sixth 1944 – or D-Day, for short.

Conventional, predictable and old-fashioned in pretty much every respect, the film relies on an endless stream of on-screen titles (one of which, unforgivably, includes a typo: ‘Temspford’ instead of ‘Tempsford’) to tell us when and where the action is taking place. This is a handsomely-appointed affair which pays great attention to details of decor, costume, make-up and hair. However, sadly it very rarely rises above an unadventurous, by-the-numbers period-pic stodginess.

What high spots there are invariably involve the spirited, engaging Marceau, here enjoying her highest-profile role since The World Is Not Enough (1999). Unfortunately, she doesn’t get much help from the plodding script, whcich spreads the limelight among her quartet of co-stars. The real-life story involved rather less sisterly teamwork than the movie suggests. That is not to say this is an unambiguous celebration of female contributions to hazardous wartime operations. Indeed, one can interpret the film as questioning their suitability for such roles, especially when torture is involved. And so much for women’s famously high pain threshold,

Female Agents is undemandingly watchable fare, and might pass muster on television one damp afternoon, but it’s disappointing to see it clogging up British art-house screens, since its a prime example of the middling-at-best French movies that continue obtain such distribution while so many more worthwhile foreign films languish in limbo. That off-putting bland title sums it up rather well – so less enticing than the original, Les femmes de l’ombre, the direct translation of which (“Women of the Shadows”) was presumably rejected because it makes the protagonists sound shadily dubious and it would stir memories of Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1969 resistance classic Army in the Shadows (L’Armee des Ombres), not long after its very successful re-issue.

Neil Young