Bertrand Tavernier does what would have seemed improbable if not impossible. He goes at the First World War from a new angle, opens up a new area of experience: that of counting and identifying the corpses following the truce. This is a post-war war movie, a war movie with a liberalized notion of where the prefix "post-" ought to be planted after a war. Two women at the center of the action have not given up the search for their respective men -- husband in one case, Fiancé in the other -- and their common quest brings them into contact with the commandant in charge of the Bureau de Recherche et d'Identification des Militaires tués ou Disparus. A man of great conscience, and of strong suspicions about government "concealment" of up to 200,000 casualties, he wants no part in what has become the first order of official business, what to him ought to be the last order of official business: selecting an ideal nominee for the position of Unknown Soldier, somebody to go under the Arc de Triomphe. (Another new, but very small, very acute, angle: the war is seen as a boom for sculptors; every town wants its own monument.) The opening scene of a nun on horseback, giving equestrian therapy to a legless soldier on a bleak gray unpicturesque beach, reveals a rather richer vein of poetry than lies ahead, though it reveals accurately enough the overall mood: somber, concerned, dignified, bordering perhaps on sanctimonious (always a higher risk when dealing with the follies of the past). The climactic revelation that waits at the end of the women's search is an uncharacteristic dip into the trick-bag of Gothic paperbacks. All in all, a worthy effort. With Philippe Noiret and Sabine Azéma. (1990) — Duncan Shepherd
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