La Rafle (2010) - film review

In 1942, Joseph is 11.  A Jew, he must go to school with a yellow star sewn onto his chest.  Although he is mocked by some, others treat him kindly and he feels that he and his family have found a safe refuge in Paris.  At least that is what he thinks until 16th July.  On that day, French police raid the homes of thousands of Jewish families like Joseph’s and take them away to holding centres to await deportation.  Of the 13,000 Jews rounded up, 7,000 end up in the Winter Velodrome, including 4,000 children.  It is not long before the Jews are moved on to an internment camp, where their ultimate fate suddenly becomes apparent...

La Rafle (a.k.a. The Round Up) recounts, in meticulous and at times gruelling detail, one of the bleakest chapters in French history.  On 16th July 1942, just over 13,000 Jews (including 4,000 children) were rounded up in Paris by the French police and bussed to holding centres prior to being shipped to the extermination camps.  7,000 of these unfortunates were held for five days, in appalling conditions, at the Winter Velodrome, from which this infamous roundup (the largest of its kind prosecuted in France) derives its name: la Rafle du Vel d’hiv.  The film reveals nothing new - its subject matter is one that is taught to every school child in France and has already featured in two very respectable films, Michel Mitrani’s Les Guichets du Louvre (1974) and Joseph Losey’s Monsieur Klein (1976).  However, through its authentic reconstruction of real events, La Rafle brings home the scale and inhumanity of a state-orchestrated crime which has left a deep scar on the French psyche, and which must serve as a perpetual reminder of the necessity to guard against racism in all its forms.

The film is sincerely meant and a polished production, but it falls somewhat short of being a masterpiece.  The distinguished cast and blockbuster production values can hardly fail to give La Rafle mainstream appeal (it attracted an audience of 2.9 million in France, despite some mixed reviews), but its impact is greatly diminished by flaws in both the screenwriting and direction.  What harms the film’s integrity most is its half-hearted attempt to explain how the roundup came about, to finger those who were responsible.  Periodically, we are snatched away from the main narrative thread and forced to eavesdrop on (a not very convincing) Hitler going off on one of his demented tirades and covert meetings between the French government and high-ranking Nazi officials.  Some of these digressions offer a few shocking revelations (such as the fact that it was the French government which persuaded the Nazis to deport children, because France lacked the resources to adopt thousands of orphans), but most are unwelcome and weaken the dramatic thrust of the film.   Another possible error of judgement is the film’s unnecessary epilogue, which is a crude (if not unseemly) attempt to lift the mood and end on a more positive note after we learn that thousands of children have been sent to their deaths.  You can understand why director Rose Bosch felt this upbeat Hollywood-style coda was necessary but it just fails to ring true and feels painfully hollow after the harrowing scenes that preceded it.

Despite its shortcomings, La Rafle is a film that grabs the attention and delivers a fair number a few emotional jolts (which just about make up for the egregious bouts of sentiment-milking and the generally lacklustre performances).  Whatever sins the film commits are forgotten in an instant when we follow Mélanie Laurent into the Winter Velodrome and are confronted with the jaw-dropping spectacle of thousands of people crammed into a vast arena as though they were cattle.  Okay, so it is obviously a computer-generated image (and not a particularly brilliant one at that), but it still brings a lump to your throat and makes you realise the obscene scale of the roundup and its human consequences.   The film’s one other stomach-pummelling sequence is the one that takes place in the Beaune-la-Rolande camp (the last stop before Auschwitz), when thuggish German soldiers turn up and start separating the children from their screaming mothers.  Such is the brutal intensity of this scene that you are left in something of a daze for the rest of the film (which is probably just as well as it is all downhill from this point).  It is these two heart-stopping moments that remain firmly lodged in the mind of any spectator long after watching the film and say pretty well all that needed to be said about the vel d’hiv roundup.

© James Travers 2011

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