Strayed (2003)

Plots dealing with human relations taking place in closed environments are not easy to show on screen - even if the background is challenging and characters have to develop. In spite of catchy and versatile beginning, the events later, especially mansion-related ones, seem protracted at times, although there is more dynamism than statics. The romantic link is not evolving sufficiently, and it's climax is somewhat peculiar.Luckily, all major performances are good, including the children who provide realistic approaches, not difficult to achieve sometimes... But when the credits appeared, I had to admit that I had expected more, since it was a French film, and the French are usually vibrant and spirited, but the overall atmosphere was more like a Dutch or Scandinavian one. Or were the war-time Frenchmen all so depressed and torpid?

Odile, a schoolteacher war widow flees Paris with her 13YO son and 6YO daughter as the German army advances upon the city, and on the way she coldly rejects a wounded soldier's desperate pleas for a lift. Later, when the column of refugees are strafed by German fighters and her car is destroyed, they are rescued by a strange crew-cut young man, Yvan. Recognizing his talent for survival, the helpless mother and children attach themselves to him. They all move into a large abandoned house that he discovers in the remote countryside, whereupon the illiterate Yvan scavenges for food by trapping rabbits and stealing chickens from distant farms. Odile lies to her children to protect them from the horrors of war, but continues to distrust Yvan for his suspiciously obscure origins. Techine seems to portray each member of this displaced family selfishly engrossed in their own need, perhaps intending them to represent the fragmented French nation itself. When Odile asserts herself as the matriarch of this family, grudging bonds of affection begin to form - but the balance is upset when the outside world finally intrudes on their pastoral idyll, and the characters contradict their earlier behavior in strangely inconsistent ways. The resourceful Yvan's mysterious background is eventually revealed, only for Techine to impose an especially counter-intuitive destiny upon him. "Les Egares" is beautifully shot and is never less than absorbing, but the characters' emotional detachment becomes an obstacle to intense involvement in their story.

I'll start by agreeing with others here that the acting in the movie was very good, Emmanuelle in particular did a great job. The kids even did a good job although at times they were forced to use lines that kids would never say (um, 10ish year-old girl screaming about wanting to get impregnated? Okay ...) Unfortunately, the actors and the scenery were the best things about this movie.While watching the film I simply did not understand why there was a sexual encounter between the mother and the teen boy. There was no buildup, there was no real interest between the characters, it just BAM happened. It came completely out of the blue (although bless you Ms. Beart. I'd loved to have been in that kid's shoes during that scene ...) This relationship that was built up somewhat in the trailer and the advertising made no sense whatsoever. The "love" story in this movie seemed like a complete "Hollywood" style cop-out where a little bit of skin or sex has to be included in any movie about "relationships" to make the mouth-breathing public happy.After listening to some of the interviews on the DVD I was finally able to figure out where the director went horribly wrong. The author of the original book said that in his story the 2 soldiers tried to rape the mother until the teen boy comes out of the blue and saves her. After that she sleeps with him somewhat out of gratitude. That at least sounds plausible.However, the explanation of why she slept with him in the movie ... that the she became lonely after hearing about the soldier talking about going back to his family ... I completely missed in the film. When they brought up this idea in the interviews it felt like I must've been watching a completely different movie.This film introduced the soldiers as potentially dangerous characters, and throughout their scenes we were never led to cast our doubt aside. Therefore the idea of her being so moved by this soldier's story (a soldier that might be thinking of raping her) that her loneliness drives her to have sex with the teen boy (of which she seemingly had no real interest) is laughable. The audience was never led to believe much of anything that left the soldier's mouth, so why should we accept that the mother character would be so moved by it that it would drive her to very suddenly jump the bones of the teen boy? Without the soldiers attempting to rape her, as what occurred in the book, there was never any ultimate resolution between the two world-views of the main characters ... the survival of the fittest mentality of the boy (who was ready to attack the unarmed soldiers with an axe) vs. the living through society/morality viewpoint put forth by the mother. The movie just sort of ended ... If the boy had gone ahead to murder the soldiers there would've at least been some deeper question revealed about how people maybe need to make choices between life/death/killing/stealing/etc when they are forced into the middle of a situation where their lives are in danger. This conflict between world-views, that the movie was seemingly built toward, was completely abandoned and unresolved.

Before I discuss Strayed I should say that I am a big fan of French cinema and therefore don't agree with the sweeping generalisation that it is over-ponderous and self-important. Strayed however most certainly does conform to this stereotype. It all begins very promisingly with a family running into the woods to escape German bombs and encountering an almost savage seventeen year old youth. The children like him while the widowed mother (played by Beart) is a little more reticent. Unfortunately the film then peters out and the rest of it meanders along with no sense of tension or character development. It is as though the writer came up with what he thought was a good idea, and then after writing a few pages realised that in fact he still had writer's block. The sex with which the film culminates appears to have been added to give the film some spice, but there are simply no preliminaries (at least on the part of Beart's character) to make her sudden rampant desire in any way explicable. The acting is good as is the general mood set by the music and the scenery, but this does not excuse the fact that this film simply has nothing important or interesting to say.