With CM Carron,be warned: you've got to expect the unexpected :her works may be considered progressive or downright reactionary ,sometimes both at once; it's impossible to remain indifferent to them.
This kind of movie would have been slagged off by the politically correct ones in the seventies;the values it defends were obsolete then.
A young man does soul-searching : for his parents ,his future is planned :a brilliant philosophy student ,he would become an erudite professor,part of the elite .He was nurtured in a privileged milieu :the parents , an engineer and a philosophy professor ,are the perfect embodiment of the bourgeois bohemes (the bobos) ; they probably were (gingerly) rebellious is the post -May 68 days and later they embraced the champagne-which they consume at an alarming speed- socialism without a moment's hesitation ;now they live a comfortable cosy life ; when sonny does not seem to play the name of the game anymore, daddy thinks "he must be in love" :that shows the gap between both generations .
David is sick and tired of this stifled politically correct life ; his first attempt at a rebellion against it (playing Robin Hood with his pack of rich kids ,stealing from the (so-called) rich and giving to the poor ) does not satisfy him.
The meeting with Henri ,a former legionnaire , will be a revelation ;the rapport they have is extraordinary and both actors must be praised ;Henri is proud of his past ;little by little, he becomes a model for the young man longing for something different ; Miss Carron does not depict a word of honor and faith though; she does not forget the masters of war , the multinational companies who use the soldiers as puppets ; a long conversation with David's parents
deals with a much-debated subject: did the French really help the Algerians (the conquest began under Charles X 's reign ) or did they exploit their richness ?"We left them too soon " the legionnaire says ,"now they want to come to our country ,they envy us" .
"After Evian agreements ,we (the army) were humiliated ,hated by the people ,Henri adds , who used to see us as torturers ";but one thing is only skimmed over :they sent conscripts called up for the national service ,this is the biggest flaw of the movie ; my wife remembers the day when they walked her uncle to the railway station when his furlough was through :all the family was crying ;he escaped unharmed, but some guys were not as lucky as him ;a lady told me that one night , her son left his patrol to wash up ;when he returned ,all the soldiers ' throats were slit.
So I suggest the viewer see the movies of the early seventies which depicts what Miss Carron passes over in silence : René Vautier 's "avoir vingt ans dans les Aurès " and Yves Boisset's "RAS".
Nowadays , the army is professional and the young men have choice : that's why one can respect David's ; his sincerity cannot be called into question ;whereas in the thirties , the character joined the legion étrangère to escape from the police (Julien Duvivier's 'la bandera ") , David sacrificed a brilliant comfortable life ,with extremely good prospects , for a dangerous future : his grandfather fought for his country ,and he wants to bridge the gap between the two generations.
This is actually the first part of a trilogy : "le soleil reviendra" would deal with the ordeals of a pregnant woman waiting for her love ,fighting in Afghanistan ; then " la beauté du monde" would show the return of the soldier ,and his difficulties to readjust to the civilian life .
