La Chambre des officiers (2001)
Directed by François Dupeyron

Film Review

Although it hasn't enjoyed the publicity and popular success of some other notable French films in 2001, there is little doubt that La Chambre des Officiers is one of the highlights of French cinema in that year.  This became clear at the 2002 Césars ceremony where the film was nominated in several categories and won awards for the best cinematography and best supporting actor (André Dussolier).  The film has received mixed but generally favourable reviews, although it is probably one of those films which is rated more highly at a later date than the time it was made in.

La Chambre des Officiers is based on a novel of the same name by Marc Dugain and is essentially concerned with one man's struggle to come to terms with an horrific facial disfigurement which he sustained during WWI.   That soldier has to endure not just the initial physical pain of having his face half blown off and then painstakingly repaired (over a four year period), but also the psychological torment of fear of how others will react to his deformity.  The film conveys this suffering without melodrama and sentimentality, but manages to tell its story with an intense poignancy and deeply engaging humanity.  Although very little actually happens in the film, it is brimming with compassion and emotion, making it a genuinely engaging portrayal of the best and worst in human nature.

The film does have one noticeable fault, which is the somewhat artificial opening segment.  This shows the officer, before he is mutilated, pursuing an unconvincing romance with a woman he meets by chance on a railway platform before going off to war.  This is only part of the film which fails to ring true, partly because of the way in which it is filmed, as the cliché it so blatantly is.

Some viewers may also find the tragicomic ending to be in bad taste - it is certainly very politically incorrect, but that is probably more than justified, given the era in which the film is set.  It is also perhaps a sad reminder of how little attitudes towards disabled or disfigured people have changed over the last century.

Tetsuo Nagata's appropriately sombre photography is impressive and contributes greatly to the film's atmosphere and impact.  Particularly memorable are the scenes in the officers' ward, lit by an almost ethereal filtered sunlight which creates a sense of limbo and isolation from the rest of the world.

The standard of acting is equally noteworthy, with special mention for Eric Caravaca, who plays the central character, Adrien, and Sabine Azéma, who gives a totally mesmerising performances as his nurse.  It is the brittle relationship between their two characters which more than anything provides the film with its humanity.

La Chambre des officiers will probably come to be remembered with the same admiration and affection as David Lynch's 1980 film, The Elephant Man, to which it is effectively the French language equivalent.  Among the many similarities between the two films, both are primarily stunningly filmed morality tales about how human beings respond to physical deformity.

Film Synopsis

At the start of the First World War, a young lieutenant, Adrien, is badly injured in a shell explosion.  When he comes to, he realises that the lower part of his face has been blown away, although he is otherwise unharmed.  He is taken to a hospital where a specialist surgeon attempts to rebuild his mutilated face.  Although he is suicidal at first, Adrien somehow finds the strength to accept his predicament, with the support and friendship from a kind-hearted nurse, Anaïs, and fellow soldiers who have a similar disfigurement.  All the time, he dreams of being reunited Clémence, the woman he met and fell in love with shortly before his injury...