Les Femmes de l'ombre (AKA Female Agents)

[slickstu]

When a British geologist surveying the beaches of Normandy in preparation for D-Day is captured by the Nazis, French resistance fighter siblings Louise (Sophie Marceau) and Pierre Desfontaine (Julien Boisselier) are despatched by the British Special Operations Executive to retrieve him before he spills the beans. Accompanying them on their mission are four female operatives each with their own specialty talent - an explosives expert, a radio operator, a seductive showgirl and a homicidal hooker.

Women have not traditionally featured heavily in war movies and in reality their achievements are rarely fully recognized; Les Femmes de l'ombre seeks to remedy this oversight. Inspired by the life of French resistance fighter, Lise Villameur, director/writer Jean-Paul Salome veers heavily into fiction but makes up for it with a gripping story which doesn't pull it's punches in terms of depicting the horrors of war and the unthinkable actions each side resorted to in their attempts to secure victory.

It is rare for a film to have such strong female characters and the women here succeed admirably in their roles. Sophie Marceau, Julie Depardieu (daughter of Gérard), Marie Gillain, Déborah François, Maya Sansa - they're all great. Moritz Bleibtreu is also effective as Nazi villain, SS Colonel Heindrich.

Its awful English title aside (the literal translation, Women Of The Shadows, would have been more appropriate), Les Femmes de l'ombre is a fine tribute to the courageous women of the period and a worthy entry in the WW2 secret mission genre.

8.5 out of 10.

[pobi]

Women have not traditionally featured heavily in war movies and in reality their achievements are rarely fully recognized; Les Femmes de l'ombre seeks to remedy this oversight.

i agree on that because it is in the culture that woman are just for light works and not doing the job of man. but nowadays men and women are equal.