Lucie Aubrac is a true story, a story that unfolded in Lyon during the German occupation in World War 2. Lucie was the wife of Raymond Samuel (Daniel Auteuil), an important member of the resistance movement – and her fame rests on how she reacted when her husband, along with other freedom fighters, was arrested by the Gestapo.
Director Claude Berri – best known for Jean De Florette and its sequel Manon Des Sources – has made a visually lush, but rather cliched, film of these events. Cliched because, regrettably, so much is predictable; maybe there've been just too many resistance movies – so that the sabotage of the train, the arrests, the Nazi who eyes his pretty Aryan secretary while the heroic prisoners are beaten, the car that won't start at a crucial moment – we've seen all this before. Carole Bouquet, who replaced Juliette Binoche two weeks into filming, does an adequate job as Lucie, and, on a mechanical level, the film's moderately exciting, even if it leaves no really lasting impression.
