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.
