Okay, you know going in that it's yet another film about a female agent liaising with the Resistance in Occupied France during World War Two, some viewers may even have read the (undeservedly) best-selling novel on which it was based, but you go anyway, maybe you admire Cate Blanchett and I've no quarrel with that, she's a fine actress, maybe you like 'period' movies, again you won't hear a squawk out of me, in fact those two reasons were what prompted me. It's a good movie - well, it's not a BAD movie, but perhaps in this case the opposite of bad is NOT good. An indifferent movie is nearer the truth. Within the last couple of years an English newspaper gave away a series of dvds set in WWII one of which was Carve Her Name With Pride which covers much of the same ground except that it was about a REAL Resistance worker, Violette Szabo, who failed to survive the war unlike the fictional Gray; Carve Her Name, made in black and white is light years better than the Technicolored Charlotte Gray, Blanchett's fine performance notwithstanding. As long as we're making comparisons I also disagree with the person who unaccountably rated this movie higher than Claude Berri's Lucie Aubrac but then difference of opinion is what makes horse races.
Review of Charlotte Gray
