Palace (1985) - film review

A French soldier, Lucien Morland, is captured by the Germans during the liberation of France in 1944.  Taken to Germany, he manages to escape and, by chance, meets up with his brother, Robert, who shelters him in a prisoner-of-war camp.  Robert works as a pianist and odd-job man in a hotel, and might be able to give his brother safe passage back to France – if he is prepared to wait, that is...

Despite some generally good acting and some great photography, this film suffers from a very threadbare and totally unconvincing plot.  Any film that relies so heavily on coincidence is bound to lose credibility and lack impact, but things are made worse by the addition of some over-the-top action scenes which would sit better in a boy’s action strip cartoon rather than a serious war-time drama.

Although the film has some fine actors – including the superlative Daniel Auteuil and Claude Brasseur – the characterisation is weak, and towards the end of the film you don’t really care what happens to any of them.

Where the film does stand up – and commendably so – is in re-creating the mood of war-time Germany.  There are some excellent little scenes – such as where Auteuil is sheltered by a German woman and her mother – which convey some sense of the weariness of the German people towards the latter stages of World War II.  If only the director Edouard Molinaro had been able to imbue the whole of the film with this sense of believability and depth, this would have been a very fine film indeed.

© James Travers 2000

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