"La vie devant moi " and "une jeune fille qui va bien" both feature a young girl with an extreme desire to live ;but it was 1942, the darkest hour of the occupation:the roundup of Jews in the Velodrome d'Hiver !;whereas Sandrine Kimberlain 's movie was a fiction , and showed a young girl so eager to become a successful actress that she hardly catched a glimpse of the nightmare surrounding her ;Nils Tavernier (Bertrand's son) films a true story , much more honest and ,even though the directing is MTV quality, we feel for his heroine (Violette Guillon),which was difficult in Kimberlain 's almost feel-good (in 1942!) work.
700+ days! It's like a prison sentence when you are a teenager! In an attic ,with your parents , where danger awaits all time:footsteps,a banging door; a window that shows a party is the only scene of the outside world they can glimpse; a skylight ,which shows a high-flying bird, and in the distance ,the Sacré-coeur, but also the Nazi
flag over Paris, soldiers marching on the streets ; the screenplay is based on a dozen days among the interminable waiting;the film is also a tribute to the just ,the couple who hides this family at the risk of their life (Sandrine Bonnaire and Laurent Bateau),the devoted doctor (a cameo by Bernard Le Coq)who saves the father (Guillaume Gallienne) from gangrene .
We do feel for the girl ,eventually free, walking or biking in the streets ; the viewer seems free too after these desperate hours where they were only whispering in the dark ; library pictures included feat the general De Gaulle.
