Mon colonel (2006) - film review

In 1993, a retired colonel, Raoul Duplan, is shot dead in Paris.  Anonymous letters and diary extracts are sent to the police and the army, hinting that the killing is linked to the Algerian war of independence.   In 1957, Guy Rossi, a young volunteer recruit, finds himself under Duplan’s command.  Institutional torture and summary execution are not what Rossi had expected when he enlisted in the French army, but these are the duties Duplan expects him to discharge, for the honour of France...

Mon colonel is a film that provides a sobering reflection on the war that France would still like to forget, and with good reason.  "France without Algeria is not France" was a mantra that was oft repeated during Algeria’s war of independence (1954-1962) as the country supposedly wedded to the notion of liberty, egality and fraternity fought tooth and nail to hold onto its colonial past.  It was a belief that galvanised the French military into acts of barbarism that no supposedly civilisation on Earth could ever countenance.   This film reminds us – with great force and sincerity – of France’s most shameful period.  In a wider context (not unrelated to more recent events), the film also shows how easy it is for an occupying military presence to cross the line into unthinking savagery, through the misguided belief that the ends will justify the means.

The screenplay, adapted from Francis Zamponi’s novel, was co-scripted by Costa-Gavras, the acclaimed director, known for political films such as Z (1969) and L’Aveu (1970).  The impressive cast is headed by Robinson Stévenin and Olivier Gourmet (who had to shed thirty kilograms so that he could get into an officer’s uniform).  Stévenin is particularly convincing as the naive young army officer who ends up being torn between his duty to France, a desire to impress his superiors and his conscience.  His is a startling portrayal of misguided loyalty and moral cowardice, against which Olivier Gourmet’s loathsome Colonel Duplan appears to be a man of integrity, but only because he is so obviously lacking in humanity and conscience.

So powerful are some of the images in this film, and so effective is it in evoking the past and its continuing impact on the present, that the film’s artistic deficiencies are readily overlooked.   For his first film, director Laurent Herbiet uses an approach that is perhaps too conventional, too detached and could perhaps have been much more daring in his mise-en-scène.  The sequences set in Algeria in  the 1950s are far more effective than those set in the present day, and not only because they are shot in crisp black-and-white (which somehow makes the atrocities played out before our eyes even more gruesome).  By contrast, the scenes set in present day France lack any dramatic force, and even the denouement seems feeble and a tad unconvincing (despite Charles Aznavour’s moving cameo appearance).  What seems to be missing is a sense of the extent to which the events of the Algerian conflict still shock, still continue to evoke shame and incredulity in the French people, when they are revived.  Yet films such as this do a a great service in reminding us of the political and military blunders of the past, so that, perhaps, we may avoid them in the future.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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