WWII drama puts high gloss on "Female" action

Female Agents

By Bernard Besserglik

PARIS (Hollywood Reporter) - Jean-Paul Salome's "Female Agents" doesn't pretend to be much more than an old-fashioned action flick with a feminist slant.

Unashamedly targeting mainstream audiences, the movie boasts high production values and packs sufficient star power to appeal broadly in home and foreign markets.

"Agents" revolves around an all-woman commando unit that parachuted into occupied France in May 1944 to rescue a British agent captured while reconnoitering the terrain ahead of the Normandy landings. Resistance fighter Louise (Sophie Marceau) heads a team that includes feisty prostitute Jeanne (Julie Depardieu), good-time cabaret artiste Suzy (Marie Gillain) and nervous explosives expert Gaelle (Deborah Francois), patriots one and all.

Linking up with radio operator Maria (Maya Sansa), who's already in position, they get the job done in double-quick time. Then they are charged by their London controllers with a follow-up mission to kill Karl Heindrich (Moritz Bleibtreu), head of German military intelligence, who they fear might have correctly deduced the location of the pending Allied landings. Louise's brother Pierre (Julien Boisselier) is captured, as is Gaelle. The female agents launch an assassination attempt in a Metro station. It fails, and one of them is killed as a result.

There are torture scenes and seductions. Salome papers over the numerous gaps and implausibilities in the plot by keeping the action moving at breakneck speed, leaving little time for reflection. The hardest part of the film, according to Salome, was "making it as realistic as possible while providing plenty of glamour." Glamour clearly won out over realism; the spectator is left to wonder how the heroines remain so impeccably groomed and maintain such a well-stocked wardrobe while on the run in penury-ridden Paris.

Louise is portrayed as wanting above all to raise a family, and each of the agents is given a defining human quality -- one her Catholic faith, another her desire to avenge her murdered Jewish parents, and so on. The characterization, however, is perfunctory. Most of the stock figures from wartime resistance movies are present, with only Bleibtreu as the troubled but duty-bound German officer hinting at anything original.

Technically the movie is spot-on, with the reconstructions of occupied Paris a strong point. Salome directs with conviction and, despite the film's simplicities -- or, perhaps, in its depiction of an age when wars had a clear beginning and end, because of them -- these female agents are likely to carry audiences with them.