Taglines: The story of an ordinary woman in an extraordinary time.
Charlotte Gray, a young Scottish woman, who has studied in France, is living in London during World War II. Within weeks she both falls in love with a young pilot and is recruited by the Secret Service to act as a courier for the French Resistance. However her mission behind enemy lines becomes a personal mission to find her lover who has been shot down. Assigned to a Communist Resistance group she encounters acts of betrayal from sometimes unexpected sources, but meets the violence of war and her own disappointment with hope.
Charlotte Gray is a 2001 British–Australian–German film drama directed by Gillian Armstrong. The screenplay was adapted from Sebastian Faulks’ novel with the same title. It is set in Vichy France during World War II. The film stars Cate Blanchett, James Fleet, Abigail Cruttenden, Rupert Penry-Jones, Michael Gambon and Billy Crudup.
The story is based on the exploits of women in Great Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) who worked with the French resistance in Nazi-occupied France. The character Charlotte Gray is a composite based on such SOE agents as Pearl Cornioley, Nancy Wake, Odette Sansom and Violette Szabo.
Film Review for Charlotte Gray
ate Blanchett’s strong, handsome face is perfect for a beret; her frame is perfect both in 1940s civilian tailoring and in uniform, perfect for the stage furniture of wartime nylons and proffered cigarettes. She looks wonderful pedalling a squeaky bicycle through the countryside of Vichy France.
This beautiful and charismatic actress should have been great casting as Charlotte Gray, in the new screen version of Sebastian Faulks’s second world war-set bestseller about an undercover agent with the Special Operations Executive, parachuted into France for secret missions against the Nazis. Yet she, like everyone else, looks unconvinced and unconvincing in a film lumbered with strangely redundant emotionalism, and laborious costumed archetypes unhappily reminiscent of Captain Corelli and British TV serials about the resistance, like LWT’s Wish Me Luck, or even the dreaded ‘Allo, ‘Allo.
Charlotte Gray is a passionate, intelligent Scotswoman who falls in love with a handsome airman (Rupert Penry-Jones), but when he is shot down over France, she accepts a mission in the country with the covert intention of finding him. One of her big plusses as an agent was supposed to be her excellent French – but actually it turns out everyone over there speaks English with a French accent anyway. This is quite a shock when the first local speaks to her, and you expect her to be caught out like Gordon Jackson in The Great Escape: “Morning, Madame!” – “Morning! Oh bugger .”
After that, she just carries on speaking English with a Scottish accent to her clandestine French associates in the village of Lezignac, including the handsome communist resistance worker Billy Crudup and his glowering old dad Michael Gambon who lives in a colossal farmhouse-cum-chateau in the middle of nowhere. Inevitably she falls in love with Crudup, triangulating her fervent emotions like Kate Beckinsale in Pearl Harbor.
The emotional centre of the pair’s lives turns out to be two young Jewish children, left behind in the village when their parents disappear during the collaborators’ growing anti-semitic terror. How and why exactly the children have been left behind is a question never satisfactorily answered in Gillian Armstrong’s film. They are simply a structural device to keep Charlotte in Lezignac and prevent her from chasing after her lost airman, and also to lend a spurious depth to the principals’ emotional lives. Blanchett and Crudup are not just romantically obsessed with danger and with each other – they are concerned for the children .
These boys, together with their honorary grandpa Gambon, are the focus for a finale that fails to deliver the necessary convincing anguish. All the ingredients are there; everyone does their bit, with Gambon especially giving a strong performance. There are some lovely locations. But try as it might, Armstrong’s film never comes to life.
Charlotte Gray (2001)
Directed by: Gillian Armstrong
Starring: Cate Blanchett, James Fleet, Abigail Cruttenden, Rupert Penry-Jones, Billy Crudup, Michael Gambon, Tom Goodman-Hill, Nicholas Farrell, Angus Wright
Screenplay by: Jeremy Brock
Production Design by: Joseph Bennett
Cinematography by: Dion Beebe
Film Editing by: Nicholas Beauman
Costume Design by: Janty Yates
Set Decoration by: Joanne Woollard
Art Direction by: David Allday, Tatiana Macdonald, Su Whitaker
Music by: Stephen Warbeck
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some war related violence, sensuality and brief strong language.
Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures (United States), Universal Pictures (International)
Release Date: December 28, 2001 (United States ard Canada), February 22, 2002 (United Kingdom)
Views: 120
