Occupied France in 1942. The Vélodrome d’Hiver roundup has just taken place in Paris, a grim page in history that saw the arrest and deportation to death camps of more than 13,000 Jews. Responsible for transporting from the Louvre to the Domaine de Chambord, that is to say far from the Nazis, various artistic treasures, Rose took the opportunity to do the same with six Jewish children. So here are the three girls and three boys aged around 6 to 16 forced into a strange life in a castle, sheltered, but for how long? From the start, the film Valiant Hearts has a compelling starting point for him.
Alas, this historical fiction does not live up to its subject. Concocted by no less than five screenwriters, the plot is freely inspired by the reality of the children hidden during the Occupation, a fate that the grandmother suffered from the director Mona Achache. The character of Rose (excellent Camille Cottin) is also based, in part, on a real historical figure: Rose Valland, curator of the Louvre who contributed to the recovery and restitution of tens of thousands of works looted by the Nazis.
Once past the remarkable opening sequence where we share, through thin interstices, the fragmentary point of view of the children hidden in a crate, the problems follow one another. First, despite a theoretically eminently dramatic context and the permanent threat that hovers, the tension fluctuates constantly, inconstant, especially in the second part, camped in the forest. It’s up to the music, whose techno content clashes with the bucolic setting, that has to artificially generate suspense.
Visual one-upmanship
Alternately flashy in its movements and aesthetically pleasing in its style, the staging harms the film much more than it serves it. Because the main advantage of Valiant Heartsthese are the young performers, all very fair and very credible.
However, often, the nuances of their play are crushed by the visual escalation and other plastic coquetries (such as this blue filter, at night, which momentarily — and clumsily — leads the action to the side of the tale). In a harrowing scene in a swamp, the relative stillness and privileged closeness after one of the children (shaking Ferdinand Redouloux) witnesses a tragic event show what the film could have been with a more restrained approach.
Incidentally, the moments of authenticity come when the camera stops fidgeting or preoccupied with pretty compositions, and focuses on faces in simple, yet revealing close-ups. Unfortunately, this is not enough to create a real intimacy with the young protagonists, the director more willingly shining the spotlight on her own know-how.
Sad paradox that a film which celebrates the resilience of children eclipses them so much.