Les femmes de l'ombre

Female Agents is one of the very few war films that concentrates on women as soldiers rather than wives waiting for returning men.

Based around the SOE operations towards the end of WWII this is a very well-made and well thought out offering.

Very well shot and lit, with good detailing in both set and costume, this is really a character piece as well as an action film; Sofie Marceau shines as the level-headed leader determined to carry out her mission and the rest of the cast are up to her standard.

It doesn't have a Hallmark moment in it, but chooses bleakness and some harrowing (But not horrific) scenes that mean it remains a good tense war film.

Recommended.

Films abound regarding arguably the greatest tragedy of mankind--World War II--and so many focus on the heroic sacrifices of men. What makes "Les Femmes de L'ombre" shine is that it features the typically unsung contributors to the war effort--the heroines who shared the same audacity and love of country and liberty as the men.

Aside from its cast of four gorgeous French women (and an equally delightful Italian), it features a simple, but clever agenda--the actions of a cell of saboteurs and assassins working for the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) in occupied France. There are no fantastic stories here--no plots to kill Hitler or to sabotage atomic research. Instead, the story narrows its focus to the extraordinary efforts to keep secret the particulars of the inevitable invasion of the European continent by the Allies. This is no small order, and there is much suffering in keeping what must remain secret.

The emotions in the film are well played by the actors and actresses. During the few brutal, but necessary scenes, the cries of anguish and pain are real and powerfully emotive. Louise (Sophie Marceau) is convincing as a vengeful widow who works alongside her dedicated brother, Pierre (Julien Boisselier). Jeanne (Julie Depardieu, daughter of the famous French actor Gerard Depardieu) plays a callous whore motivated at first by remission of her prison sentence, then by money, then by revenge. Gaëlle (Déborah François) portrays the naïve, religious girl who is seemingly the only true French patriot of the group. Maria (Maya Sansa) is a driven, Italian Jew whose family met its fate in a concentration camp. The most reluctant member is the lovely Suzy (Marie Gillain), whose questionable past allied her with the most unlikely of characters, Colonel Heindrich (Moritz Bleibtreu) of the Wehrmacht and the film's major antagonist. Unexpected support comes from local profiteer, Eddy (Vincent Rottiers), whose connection to Colonel Heindrich enables the saboteurs to get close to him to fulfill their mission.

If there's a noticeable weakness to the film, it is Bleibtreu cast as a Nazi colonel. He's neither evil nor intimidating. He lacks the sinister persona of Colonel Landa (Christoph Waltz) of "Inglourious Basterds," a decidedly less serious film of the genre. Where Colonel Heindrich should have been clever and cruel, his performance instead is wooden and uninspiring. Bleibtreu may be a little out of his realm in a role so serious.

Les Femmes de L'ombre is a solid contribution to the WWII films of the last decade. I hope it inspires more stories of the Resistance to be told with attention to the incredible sacrifices and dedication of normal people confronted with the horrors of Nazism.

1944. An undercover agent working for the Allies, holding vital information about the future D-Day landings, is trapped in a French hospital, behind enemy lines. The agent is potentially only hours away from being discovered by the SS, and so the British Strategic Operations Executive put together a team of French speaking agents rescue him. Except for the commanding officer, the team are all women...

Oh, yes. That sounded like just the ticket. Definitely a bit of a romp. Something along the lines of a 1940's set "Mission: Impossible". Stunts, action sequences, beautiful women with serious weaponry using their womanly wiles to run rings around evil, horny Nazis.

Forget it. "Les Femmes de l'ombre" was not that film. The girls were beautiful, there was some de rigeur European nudity and also plenty of firepower and action, but "Les Femmes de l'ombre" was a much more real, bleak and thoughtful film than I expected. Bloody, nasty and sadistic, not to mention dangerous with some toe curling scenes of torture. Mix in with that meditations on fear, betrayal and ultimate self sacrifice.

Perhaps "Les Femmes de l'ombre" was uneven, but it was also a really interesting take on that old chestnut: The war movie about a team sent behind enemy lines on a vital mission. I doubt that Tarantino will make a more memorable film when and if he finally finishes "Inglorious Bastards".

Whereas a lot of films and television over the years has made war seem a very one-sided affair and concentrated on things from a very male point of view, very few have dealt with the roles that women had played. Set during world war II Female Agents tell of one such group of agents on a mission for the British government behind enemy lines in France in 1944. The mission, to rescue a British geologist who was caught on the beaches of Normandy, the information he has is crucial to the success of the D-day landings. Also there is an SS colonel who is intent on cracking the geologists riddle and thwarting the allied attacks who must be killed no matter what the cost. Assembling the group a brother and sister team chose girls because of their backgrounds and skills and after a one day refresher course in field skills they are off. From this point on the film thanks to the story (based in truth) the acting (universally brilliant) and the cinematography (breathtaking) grips like a vice and doesn't let up until the credits roll. Challenging and at times brutal it shows in very real terms what people went through and what they sacrificed to bring down the evil Nazi regime. It shows us a time that although we don't want to remember we should never forget and this film is a fine example of the heroic work done by individuals that eventually secured our freedom as a whole. A must see movie for so many reasons.

This is a very exciting and effective film about female espionage agents of the British S.O.E. (Special Operations Executive) during World War II. It is ironical that it is the French, not the British, who made this film, in which only a few sentences of English are spoken. The English subtitles are really too rapid, I must point out. Apart from a few scenes set in England, the film effectively all takes place in Nazi Occupied France under the revolting Vichy Regime in 1944, where all the dangerous missions in the story take place. As the film proceeds, we realize that the underlying threat is that the secrets of the D-Day Normandy landings are in danger of being betrayed, thus destroying their surprise value and enabling the Nazis to win the War. So the stakes could not be higher. According to titles shown at the end of the film, this story is in many respects true, and the lead character played with tremendous, bitter panache by Sophie Marceau only died as recently as 2004 at the age of 98! As she was a French woman, though working as an agent for the SOE (and her brother worked for De Gaulle's Free French in London), that must explain why her story was known in France, and why it was French producers who decided to film it. The story as filmed contains countless inaccuracies of procedure and plot which could never really have happened, and some details are ridiculous (a sister and brother sent on the same mission together!?). So the story has been greatly hyped-up to 'Hollywoodize' it, by the French Hollywood, which we might perhaps call by the name of Tuileriewood-en-Seine, or Tile-Town as opposed to Tinsel-Town ('a night out on the tiles' being a good description for some Paris evenings). The film starts rather slowly, and one is not certain that it is going to work at first. But when it gets into its stride, it is gripping and coherent. There are many grisly scenes of torture by the Gestapo, which take a strong stomach, and seeing Nazis savagely and maniacally beating up women and nearly drowning them in water tanks, even pulling out their finger nails (this is done to the delicately beautiful actress Deborah Francois, who appears as fragile as the petals of a fluttering chamomile flower on a windy day), is more than merely upsetting. However, it was obviously decided by the producers that these pretty young women were to be treated with as much grit as men, both in their actions and in the depiction of their fates. It is no bad thing to remind viewers of how the Nazis behaved, and that they really did these things. There are some detailed touches which add to the horror of it all: a Gestapo woman clerk sits impassively at a small wooden table making notes, wholly unmoved by the agonized shrieks and screams of the women being tortured in front of her. As for the Nazi SS colonel supervising all of this and trying to get the information out of them, he could not be more bored and oblivious to the suffering and the screams, which to him are merely tedious. To the Nazis, torturing human beings was no different from stepping on ants. If it accomplishes nothing else, perhaps this film will make a few young people think for a moment about a War which to them is now 'long ago and far away', and why should they be interested. Just seeing a screen title informing us that the Gestapo's Paris Headquarters was in Avenue Foch is enough to precipitate a mild attack of hysteria. That is where all the billionaires now live in luxury. I have been in a couple of their grand houses, and all I can say is: 'Nom de Dieu!' And to think that it was in those surroundings, where the super-rich now besport themselves with their vintage Cristal champagne (I must admit it is delicious, but no one really needs it), that the Gestapo pulled out the finger nails of beautiful girls in their early twenties and thought nothing of it, merely finding their screams of pain a bore! Do see this film, if only to be horrified and appalled, but also to admire the courage of the women, not only the men, who gave their lives to defeat the greatest evil that befell a much-accursed earth during the 20th century, the regime of the monstrous instruments of Evil who dared to call themselves a Master Race.