Irena's Vow
Other than beating the tar out of Nazis, the other kind of WWII movies I enjoy are the ones that feature the unsung heroes that were able to rescue small groups of Jewish people. Irena's Vow features Irena Gut, a Polish woman forced into service by the occupying Germans in the city of Tarnopol (now in the Ukraine as Ternopol).
While working for Major Rügemer, she is assigned to supervise the laundry, and then as the housekeeper for his villa, seized from a Polish family. When she saw that all the people in the laundry were to be executed as part of Hitler's plan, she schemes to hide them in the very house that the Major now occupies.
If this wasn't a true story, I wouldn't have believed a word of this. It was so poorly acted, I felt like I was watching a modern film with costumes, instead of a film to transport us back in time to the mad era of Nazi insanity.
It becomes quite clear, sort of, early on that Rügemer has a thing for Irena, but it catapults forward when he discovers that there are Jews hiding in his home. The speed and transformation of superior to inferior to Polish lover was so fast, it just didn't make sense in the narrative.
Sophie Nélisse, as Irena, did a great job of emoting the compassion, the panic, the fear, the horror and the bravery all needed to survive. After witnessing a child get murdered on the street by yet another disgraceful "German", she really dove into her risky plan to save as many Jews as she could.
I wanted to love this due to the bravery in the depths of despair, but it wasn't completely well done. I don't know, nor can I put my finger on it, but I felt it could have been done better. I'm just glad it really happened and the people went on to live full lives. The notes in the credits were really sweet.
