Promise at Dawn

The demands in the name of love seem too harsh, even absurd. Maternal love is great, and so it is. But I don't think the maternal love in this film deserves to be publicized. The greatness here is entirely due to Roman's success. If Roman did not succeed, is there a circle in his maternal love. Roman's success depends on faith and luck. Mother's love is great, and it's hard to have a second Roman.

Absolutely DIVINAL! Majestic interpretations and how history grabs you to the screen is remarkable

La promesse de l'aube (2017) is a French film shown in the U.S. with the translated title Promise at Dawn. The movie was co-written and directed by Eric Barbier, based on a novel by Romain Gary. This is an autobiographical film, in which Gary is portrayed by Pierre Niney.

Gary was born in Poland, but became a renowned author in France. Some of what's in the movie is factual. The facts are exciting--Gary moved to France, and when the Germans conquered France, he joined the RAF.

One of the most exciting scenes in the movie shows Gary, as the navigator of a RAF bomber, talking the pilot--who is temporarily blinded--to the bombing target, and then back to the RAF airfield. (This actually happened.)

However, the movie isn't about Romain Gary's daredevil life. It's about Romain Gary and his mother, Nina Kacew, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg. If we are to believe the author, his mother played an immense role in his life--teaching him what he had to know, urging him on, and coming to him in dreams and hallucinations when she wasn't actually with him.

Who could have told us--other than Gary--how much of this was true? True of not, it certainly makes for an interesting script. The script only works because Gainsbourg is such a great actor. She's not always someone we like, but she's someone in whom we believe. I don't know another actor who could have pulled this off as well.

Incidentally, there's a confusing episode when the film starts. It's Day of the Dead in a small city in Mexico, and someone--we later learn that it's Gary--decides that he's dying and needs to go to a distant hospital in Mexico City.

Notice that the talented Catherine McCormack plays his wife, Lesley Blanch. Gary was a diplomat, and he and his wife were stationed in Mexico for a time, so maybe this really happened. (Gary later divorced Blanch and married Jean Seberg, darling of the French Nouvelle vague.)

I enjoyed this movie and would recommend it for people who like epics about famous, successful people. Promise at Dawn has a moderately strong IMDb rating of 7.2. I thought it was better than that, and rated it 8.

Based on novelist Romain Gary's biography,this is the second version of the writer's youth .In her husband Jules Dassin's 1970 movie, Melina Mercouri hammed it up,but did convince as this character of a Jewish mom ,and it was the main asset of this earlier work.That director ,in his last part of his career,was succumbing to the vices of European cinema of the era: the slow motion sequences ,which were very trendy then are almost unbearable today.Romain was played by no less than three different actors.

The same goes for the remake :a boy ,a teenager and a young man (Niney,thus,only appears in the second half);.Charlotte Gainsbourg reprises La Mère-Couri 's role and compares favorably with her performance ,less histrionic,but always omnipresent -her arrival at the base is worth the price of admission-,ambitious ,demanding ,almost in love with her son (one never sees her have an affair with a single man ,though some of them (the painter, portrayed by the always reliable Darroussin)woo her .

Longer than the first version (101 min) ,this one (125 min) sometimes drags on and seems a little patchy and desultory but it's inherent in any biography ;sex scenes are more explicit (the initiation scene with the unexpected mom because of the coach incident is featured in both movies) .

War scenes are much more developed than in the first adaptation ;it sometimes verges on ridicule : the aviator ,suffering from typhoid,crosses the hospital stark naked .

Two small details : two soldiers were actually denied their promotion,Romain was not the only one ,but it 's less storylike on the paper,let alone on the screen. The 250 letters mom supposedly wrote are pure fiction; when he was in Africa, a telegram was sent to Romain who knew his dear one was dead when he came back to France.

The prologue in Mexico ,a bit gaudy , is a bit derivative:how many biographies were filmed as flashbacks?

All in all, you should see this remake ,but mainly for miss Gainsbourg ,in one of her best parts.

NB: When the first version was released,Gary was still alive ;hence the necessity to treat his material more gingerly.

A great story, well told and represented. A good movie starts in a great script. French cinema continues to bring us the finest art.