Blanche et Marie (1984)
Directed by Jacques Renard

Film Review

The most noteworthy film from director Jacques Renard is this intimate portrait of two women serving in the French Resistance at the time of the Occupation during WWII. Whilst it covers similar ground to that of Jean-Pierre Melville's L'Armée des ombres (1969) and Claude Berri's Lucie Aubrac (1997), Renard's film is far more modest and low-key, focusing on the day-to-day experiences of two seemingly ordinary women who are committed to doing their bit in the fight against Fascism. It is a gently moving film which, whilst lacking the scale and dramatic power of similar French Occupation Era films, provides an insight into the true nature of heroism.

Miou-Miou and Sandrine Bonnaire are ideal choices to play the central protagonists, characters whose outward ordinariness and apparent fragility belie their incredible inner courage and tenacity. It is the compelling, perfectly judged performances from these two great actresses that gives Renard's film its emotional realism, making up for a somewhat lacklustre script which is somewhat lacking in character depth and fails to make the secondary characters more than thinly sketched archetypes. Whilst the film has its flaws and feels more like a television movie than a piece of cinema it does provide us with a taste of what it was like for ordinary folk to live through one of the darkest eras of French history.

Film Synopsis

1941, a town in northern France during the Nazi Occupation.  Blanche, a mother of three children, wonders why her husband is behaving so secretively, and then discovers that he is working for the French Resistance.  Marie, the daughter of a local hairdresser, also realises that her father is working for the same cause and volunteers to join.  Then Blanche's husband is killed...