Suite Française - Movie Review

Who's In It?

Michelle Williams, Kristin Scott Thomas, Margot Robbie and Matthias Schoenaerts

What's It About? 

After France's surrender to the Germans, a German officer is moved into wealthy Madame Angellier and her step-daughter's house. The madame refuses to even look at the officer, while Lucille (step-daughter) falls in love with him.

Any Good? 

One thing I didn't expect to see from Suite Francaise was the Nazis to be portrayed as just soldiers and not monsters - kind of goes against every film/game/history lesson I've ever been in - it makes the movie stand out in the rip-off Romeus and Juliet (INCLUDING Shakespeare's) genre that is romance.

The film opens with a scene where Madame Angellier and Lucille are collecting rent from tenants on their land, Madame Angellier is cruel and bleeds the farmers dry(the usual), then out of NOWHERE a German bombing party hits the road full of Parisian migrants that the pair are travelling on - it was so sudden that I just looked at Ally like "what the?..".

Putin was a Nazi?

The random bombing kind of set the scene for the film - a lot of the usual romance crap with occasional breaks for pretty heavy stuff like manhunts and executions - but for some reason it seemed to fit well into the story. 

A lot of the romantic sections are odd too, like going from being disgusted with neighbours cavorting with the Nazis and then doing it yourself immediately- I get the feeling a lot of the book was cut out of the film.

While a lot better than the usual romantic crap myself and Ally masochistically put ourselves through, Suite Francais was actually not bad. While predominantly a romance movie, it does a 180 around three quarters of the way through and becomes a suspenseful murder/people smuggling film, and all the better for it. I'd certainly watch it for the Nazi scenes, or even just for their beautiful Hugo Boss uniforms.

Also, much like the Irish and Scottish, the French share their beloved England's accent, like all nationalities did pre-2000.

We'd be remiss not to include a link to the back story of Author Irène Némirovsky, read her stunning story and how these Novellas came to be HERE. 

Rating: