Along Came Love | Dir: Katell Quillévéré | ★ ★ ★ ★
This moving film starts with black and white archival footage of American soldiers celebrating the end of World War II in the streets of a French village. It also shows extremely distressing footage of how the women were dealt with if they had had liaisons with German soldiers.
Madeline (Anaïs Demoustier) is one of those women who was stripped, had her head shaved and paraded through the town, but she was also branded with a swastika on her pregnant belly. Banished from her village, the film catches up with Madeline and her young son Daniel, who has been told that his father is dead, in a resort town on the coast of Normandy many years later.
The film started off as being Madeline’s story, when writer/director Katell Quillévéré was inspired by hearing that her grandmother had hidden the fact for all her life that she had conceived a child with a German soldier.
The moving film expands to include another outcast. Madeline meets François (Vincent Lacoste) on a Brittany beach.
He is an intellectual who missed the nightmares of war because he had polio as a child. Quillévéré bounds through the years, selecting pivotal incidents to build the story of the relationship between Madeline and François.
Madeline tells François her dark secret but he does not disclose that although he prefers relationships with men, and marrying Madeline is his protection.
In the 1950s, they both lust after the same person when they are managing a bar catering to American servicemen in France.
The translation of the French title is actually A Time to Love – and refers Douglas Sirk’s 1958 post-war saga A Time to Love and a Time to Die.
By the time the couple come to the end of the 1960s, François’ desires are still illegal, despite the protests, and the shadows of discovery still hover around both of them.
Along Came Love will screen as part of the AF French Film Festival that runs from 6 March to 2 April – at Luna Leederville, Luna on SX, Luna Outdoor, Windsor Cinema and Palace Raine Square. Go to affrenchfilmfestival.org for tickets and further information.
Lezly Herbert
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