Polish secret agent Krystyna Skarbek was said to be one of Winston Churchill’s favourite spies and the inspiration for James Bond agent Vesper Lynd. The Partisan tells the story of her bravery during the second world war, carrying out dangerous missions for British intelligence. Unfortunately, it is a basically rickety drama, not helped by being one of those films with actors speaking English dialogue in a smorgasbord of European accents. It would be more or less forgettable but for an intense, seductive lead performance by Morgane Polanski (daughter of Roman), letting rip with her character’s tortured dark side.
The tale begins in 1941, with aristocratic-born Skarbek’s first adventure as a spy, skiing over mountains into Nazi-occupied Poland. Her mission is to rendezvous with Polish resistance, and smuggle out intelligence on rolls of microfilm. She also plans to get her Jewish mother (who is taking refuge in a Warsaw church) out of Poland. Skarbek is unnervingly cool in danger. In one scene, while disguised as a sex worker, she is apprehended by German officers. Skarbek bites through her tongue and coughs up blood, faking TB; the disgusted Nazis let her go.
Polanski doesn’t remotely soften the character. What her performance shows is that the same qualities that make Skarbek an effective spy – reckless bravery, a wildness and an icy disregard for what other people think – also make her behave in questionable ways.
We also see her final mission, in 1944. Parachuted behind enemy lines into France, she is instructed to facilitate an arms drop to the French resistance, but the scenes in France are hard to follow and slow-moving. The Partisan is a film that on paper has some thrilling moments, but somehow they don’t always translate on screen as all that exciting. Unlike the heroine, it never takes much of a risk.
• The Partisan is in UK cinemas from 3 October, and on digital platforms and DVD from 27 October.
