La vie devant moi

Based on true events, The Future Awaits tells the story of Tauba, a Jewish teenager who, along with her parents, is forced to hide in a small attic during the Nazi occupation of Paris. The premise is powerful enough to unsettle anyone, but the way Nils Tavernier develops it gradually loses intensity as the minutes go by.

At first, it's easy to step into the characters' shoes and feel that constant oppression, but the film slowly falls into a heavy routine, too restrained, which dilutes the sense of anguish. The use of captions to mark the passing days helps convey tedium, though it sometimes works against the film, reinforcing a feeling of repetition rather than tension.

The performances are adequate and maintain a certain dignity, though they never truly move us. There's rigor in the staging, a careful attention to detail and atmosphere, but also an excessive conventionality that weakens the impact.

There are brief moments that manage to touch the viewer -such as the symbolism of the window through which hope peeks in- but they are exceptions in an otherwise flat narrative. The overuse of sentimentality and lack of genuine surprises mean that, halfway through, it's hard to care much about what happens to the characters, which is a heavy flaw in a drama like this.

The importance of the subject and the need to keep telling these stories cannot be denied. However, The Future Awaits remains a competent but uninspired exercise, leaving the impression that it could -and should- have been much more.

"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 caught 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.