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Derek Malcolm's rating
Deadly family secret
By
Derek Malcolm
8 May 2008
This is the story of a solitary French child who, during the Nazi occupation of France, worries his parents by inventing a fictitious brother and constantly imagining a past that is nowhere near the truth. Only on his 15th birthday does a family friend tell him his family’s real secret.
Claude Miller’s film turns out to be an intimate exploration of what it meant to be Jewish before and during the war. Stylishly made and beautifully acted, it deservedly won a major prize at Cannes.
Miller wanted to tell the tale because his own family was decimated in the camps. But there is no self-pity here. Instead it insists that these people were French first and Jewish afterwards. But that did not matter either to the Nazis or their collaborators. It is the shock of this discovery that gives Miller’s film its charge.
Cecile De France, Patrick Bruel, Mathieu Amalric and Julie Depardieu form an excellent cast. This is one of Miller’s best, told with all the skill of the best French cinema.
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