The Boston Phoenix
Review from issue: December 10 - 17, 1998

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Les Milles

The French don't have a lot to look at with pride when it comes to the fate of their Jews in World War II. Sébastien Grall's engrossing if halting 1995 film Les Milles might ameliorate that image a little.

Based on a fascinating historical footnote, Grall's movie tells the story of the title camp, in which refugees from German aggression (including such cultural figures as the painter Max Ernst) were held in the days before and after the Nazi invasion. The camp is a logistical and political embarrassment for the French, who are torn between setting the enemy nationals free and releasing them to certain death at their countrymen's hands.

The problem becomes a low priority when the blitzkrieg slashes through the Maginot Line and Commandant Charles Perochon (a masterful Philippe Noiret, conveying both officiousness and essential decency), a Great War veteran drawn out of placid bourgeois retirement, is left to dangle in the wind as the military bureaucrats cynically abandon him. No Schindler in charisma, Perochon proves nonetheless resolute and resourceful as he endeavors to load his inmates on a train and deliver them to possible safety. It's a more rigorous version of Von Ryan's Express, but less thrilling, as the director sacrifices suspense for longueurs of thoughtful dialogue and unclear exposition. Nonetheless, Noiret's performance is heartfelt, unsentimental, and humane, embodying, in a complement to Hannah Arendt's famous phrase, the banality of good.

-- Peter Keough
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