Lucie Aubrac

A film set in occupied France. Lucie is a history teacher. Her husband Raymond is an engineer and both work in the resistance. One day a meeting is raided. Raymond and the others are arrested. Lucie acts. Under a false identity she sees the prosecutor, presents herself as someone else, and gets her husband released. But after a while there is a second raid. This time Raymond falls into the hands of the Gestapo and Klaus Barbie conducts his interrogation. Lucie is pregnant. From there the film is a story about a rescue plan. A new identity, a lie, a request for a wedding, and the intercepting of a transport van. Lucie presents herself as Raymond's fiancée, left pregnant by him. Her request is to marry; she wants the child's father established before the man is executed. What the narrative is interested in is not resistance but one woman's persistence: all the risk through the film is hers, and the narrative never once places her as an assistant. Her method is lying. She never uses a weapon; her whole work is persuading officials. The tone is romantic. The narrative tells the resistance from inside a love story, and that is what the film was most criticised for. Its release fell in the same year as an argument. What the Aubracs had recounted was being questioned by historians; in 1997 a round table was held with eight historians at a newspaper's offices and the dispute did not close. The film rests entirely on the couple's own account. Carole Bouquet, Daniel Auteuil, Patrice Chéreau and Jean-Roger Milo are in the cast. Claude Berri directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes wartime France and drama told in a classical manner. Who it is not for: anyone expecting historical certainty; the film takes a contested account from a single source and gives no room to the doubts.