Un héros très discret (1996) - film review

Towards the end of World War II, a young man, Albert, decides to invent his own personal history as a war hero.  He enters the French resistance with uncanny ease and before long is posted to a French occupation zone in Germany.  He finds love, position and admiration as a hero, but to hold on to all this he must keep up a fiction of his own creation...

This film has a great deal to commend it.  Jacques Audiard’s direction is confident and mature (impressive for a second film), and the photography is exceptional throughout, capturing the mood of the war years very well without being stifled by it.   The inclusion of apparently modern-day interview segments does distract a little from the otherwise well-plotted story, but this device does add a kind of documentary feel to the film which works rather well.

Matthiew Kassovitz is perfectly cast as the wannabe hero and liar-supreme, Albert Dehousse.  The actor displays great charm and humour in playing this flawed but very amusing character.

In all, this is a fast-moving, funny and very entertaining film – all the more unusual given that the majority of French films set in this period of history are pretty grim and depressing. Un héros très discret is a welcome change, even if there are more than a few references to the atrocities of war.

© James Travers 2002

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