French director Xavier Beauvois’ spare, painterly first world war drama follows Hortense (Nathalie Baye), a stoic female farmer who protects the land, and her family’s reputation, while her boys fight on the front. There are two special moments in the film. The first sees the protagonist, a young, redheaded orphan and newly hired farmhand named Francine (Iris Bry), sitting on her bed having recently lost her virginity. Beauvois captures a changed woman’s pleased, private moment of reflection, expression transforming from bewilderment into something verging on smugness. The second is of Francine looking at herself in the mirror in the film’s third act, contemplating her freshly shorn curls as they tumble about her chin.
These flashes of interiority mark the film as uncommonly interested in women during wartime; not just in their contributions to society (though cinematographer Caroline Champetier makes something beautiful of their unglamorous daily drudgery), but in their psychology, in the absence of men.
