Les femmes de l'ombre

Plot synopsis:
Louise Desfontaines (Sophie Marceau), a successful French commando in the British Special Operations Executive, watches her husband killed during a sabotage mission on a German train depot. Upon her return, she and her brother Pierre (Julien Boisselier) are sent by Colonel Buckmaster (Colin David Reese) on a critical mission to rescue a captured British geologist (Conrad Cecil), who was examining the sands on the beaches of Normandy in advance of D-Day, from a nearby military hospital. She and Pierre convince a selection of women from among the FANY nurses' corps and French Resistance onto the team: Jeanne (Julie Depardieu), Suzy (Marie Gillain), and Gaëlle (Déborah François).German SS Colonel Heindrich (Moritz Bleibtreu) has uncovered evidence of the geologist's presence at Normandy, and tries to convince military leaders that the Allies are planning to land at Normandy, but is laughed out of the room. Heindrich needs some solid proof of his suspicions, and his officers identify the geologist at the Normandy hospital. Heindrich travels to the hospital and tries to pry information from the geologist.Meanwhile, Pierre has laid out a plan by which two of the female SOE agents will perform as cabaret dancers, as part of a show for the officers stationed at the hospital, while Louise poses as a nurse. The cabaret finish their striptease by tossing tear gas canisters under the seated officers (including Heindrich) while Louise and an undercover FANY nurse, Maria (Maya Sansa), free the geologist in a harrowing escape, with Heindrich in pursuit. While being taken to the airlift site, the geologist reveals to Pierre that Heindrich "knows about Phoenix", a code word for the planned Normandy operation.Pierre realizes that Heindrich must be prevented from passing on what he knows to the German command in order to safeguard the Normandy invasion plans. He orders the women, who expected to be done after the Normandy rescue, to travel to Paris, where Heindrich is stationed. After they leave, German officers arrive at the landing site, and capture Pierre. Heindrich tortures Pierre for information, but Pierre resists.Heindrich's staff develop a photo that was taken by an officer at the cabaret show in Normandy, and recover a clear image of Gaëlle, one of the Desfontaines' team. At the Paris train station, Gaëlle is apprehended, and the rest of the team finds shelter in a music school which is a cover for the French Resistance. Heindrich presents Gaëlle to Pierre, threatening to torture her if he doesn't talk, hoping to appeal to Pierre's empathy. An officer pulls out one of Gaëlle's fingernails, and she immediately reveals the location of the school where the rest of the team is hiding. While Heindrich's men arrive at the school, the girls escape through a secret passage to the Paris catacombs. Imprisoned together, Pierre tries to strangle Gaëlle but is stopped by their captors.Desfontaines meets with a contact at the Natural History Museum, Melchior (Robin Renucci), who informs her of a plan to assassinate Heindrich at the Concorde metro station. It has been discovered that Suzy, one of Desfontaine's team, has had a previous relationship with Heindrich; she will be used as a lure, through an undercover tip, to get Heindrich to the station. Louise is provided with a sniper rifle to execute Heindrich while her team takes positions in the station. At the station, Heindrich arrives on the tip, but cannot be seen by Louise, who hides in the subway tunnel. With the help of members of the French Resistance, the train is held up, with Suzy aboard. Heindrich approaches the train, but Louise cannot get a clear shot; he enters the train and approaches Suzy. Maria, on the train and caught off guard, hastily attempts to shoot Heindrich, but is shot and killed by Heindrich's men. Heindrich, realizing the trap, gets off the train; Louise takes a shot, but only grazes his ear. The women manage to capture Eddy (Vincent Rottiers), a young socialite member of Heindrich's staff, who the women coerce into helping them.A new plan to assassinate Heindrich is hatched, again using Suzy as lure but also as gunwoman. Eddy informs Heindrich that a woman resembling Suzy will be at a nearby hotel. Jeanne, posing as a maid, plants a gun under the pillow of the bed. Heindrich arrives at Suzy's hotel room, and begins to romance her. She grabs the gun and aims, but she is unable to shoot her former lover. Heindrich takes the gun away and begins to kiss her on the bed. Outside, Louise and Melchior hear gunshots, and Jeanne runs out the back entrance. Louise and Melchior watch as a body covered with a sheet is wheeled out of the hotel, shortly followed by Heindrich.Louise is captured by Heindrich, and torturing her in front of Pierre, he persuades Pierre to reveal all he knows. Pierre, obtaining a promise from Heindrich that Louise will not be executed, reveals all of the secrets of the plans to use flooded pontoons to rapidly build a harbour at Normandy for a massive landing of Allied troops. While Pierre confirms Heindrich's suspicions, he realizes hell still need hard proof to convince General Rommel of his discovery, so he plans to take Pierre with him to Rommel as evidence. But, as the handcuffed Louise looks on, Pierre, in a desperate bid to escape further humiliation - using a blade grabbed from the torture table - commits suicide by slitting his own throat. Denied his proof, Heindrich renegs on his promise, and plans to have Louise executed.Back in their cell, Louise joins Gaëlle, who begs for forgiveness and help from Louise, who gives both in the form of a tearful nod and the passing of her cyanide pill. After Louise is taken away, Gaëlle prays alone in her cell, strips naked, lies on the floor, and takes the pill.While being transported, Louise is rescued by Jeanne and Melchoir, a member of the French Resistance whom Louise had met at the Museum of Natural History, though Melchior is killed. Jeanne and Louise rush to the station where Heindrich is planning to leave for a last-chance attempt to convince Rommel. Jeanne tells Louise she will cause a distraction, and not to worry about her. She walks up to the station Gestapo and shoots one of them, immediately being arrested. Louise walks down the platform and finds Heindrich, and shoots him down.We see Louise back in SOE headquarters, where Buckmaster offers Louise and her group his personal thanks, though Louise demands he find Jeanne. At her FANY role at a military hospital, Buckmaster arrives with a series of photos ( taken at the liberation of Jeanne's concentration camp) . The last photo Louise sees is of Jeanne, lying topless and expressionless with a rope around her neck. There's a soulful ending with Louise lighting four candles in church in rememberance.

Tags: romantic, historical fiction

Review:
I know it isn't 100% accurate but the acting of all the cast is quite superb in my opinion.Sophie Marceau as Louise stands out in this film, her acting is superb and although she is clearly a beautiful woman she does not seem to mind looking less than glamorous throughout.
Julie Depardieu as Jeanne, Maya Sansa as Maria,are all good as is the stunning Marie Gillain, but Déborah François as Gaëlle,did an amazing job showing her characters naiveté and youth and some really strong and convincing emotions especially when captured.
The girls were beautiful, there was some de rigeur European nudity and also plenty of firepower and action, but "Les Femmes de l'ombre" was a much more real, bleak and thoughtful film than I expected.
Mix in with that meditations on fear, betrayal and ultimate self sacrifice.Perhaps "Les Femmes de l'ombre" was uneven, but it was also a really interesting take on that old chestnut: The war movie about a team sent behind enemy lines on a vital mission.
I think a more direct translation of the title as "Women of the Shadows" or some such would have been much more evocative.The film itself is a gritty WWII espionage drama in the classic mold, with the team of misfits being assembled to do the job that only they can do.
Moritz Bleibtreu is especially effective as an SS Colonel who believes himself to be a decent man, doing only what he must, yet in reality committing atrocity after atrocity.Special effects are well used to give us occupied Paris in great detail, and the whole look of the film is quite stylish.
Whereas a lot of films and television over the years has made war seem a very one-sided affair and concentrated on things from a very male point of view, very few have dealt with the roles that women had played.
Set during world war II Female Agents tell of one such group of agents on a mission for the British government behind enemy lines in France in 1944.
Apart from a few scenes set in England, the film effectively all takes place in Nazi Occupied France under the revolting Vichy Regime in 1944, where all the dangerous missions in the story take place.
As the film proceeds, we realize that the underlying threat is that the secrets of the D-Day Normandy landings are in danger of being betrayed, thus destroying their surprise value and enabling the Nazis to win the War. So the stakes could not be higher.
According to titles shown at the end of the film, this story is in many respects true, and the lead character played with tremendous, bitter panache by Sophie Marceau only died as recently as 2004 at the age of 98!
As she was a French woman, though working as an agent for the SOE (and her brother worked for De Gaulle's Free French in London), that must explain why her story was known in France, and why it was French producers who decided to film it.
The story as filmed contains countless inaccuracies of procedure and plot which could never really have happened, and some details are ridiculous (a sister and brother sent on the same mission together!?).
Female Agents is one of the very few war films that concentrates on women as soldiers rather than wives waiting for returning men.Based around the SOE operations towards the end of WWII this is a very well-made and well thought out offering.
Very well shot and lit, with good detailing in both set and costume, this is really a character piece as well as an action film; Sofie Marceau shines as the level-headed leader determined to carry out her mission and the rest of the cast are up to her standard.It doesn't have a Hallmark moment in it, but chooses bleakness and some harrowing (But not horrific) scenes that mean it remains a good tense war film.Recommended..
What makes "Les Femmes de L'ombre" shine is that it features the typically unsung contributors to the war effort--the heroines who shared the same audacity and love of country and liberty as the men.Aside from its cast of four gorgeous French women (and an equally delightful Italian), it features a simple, but clever agenda--the actions of a cell of saboteurs and assassins working for the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) in occupied France.
This is the story of four girls recruited in the latter part of WWII, who are dropped into occupied France, and reek havok to rescue a captured British spy, caught in France posing as a geologist.
In 1944, in London, Lieutenant Pierre Desfontaines (Julien Boisselier) assigns his sister Louise Desfontaines (Sophie Marceau) to convince three other women to form a five-woman task force under his command to rescue a British geologist from a German hospital in the countryside of France.
Louise and Pierre force the whore Jeanne Faussier (Julie Depardieu) that is imprisoned for murdering her pimp; the explosives expert Gaëlle Lemenech (Déborah François) that misses action; and the former dancer and fiancé of Colonel Karl Heindrich (Moritz Bleibtreu), Suzy Desprez (Marie Gillain) using blackmail and unethical methods to fly to France and join the Italian agent Maria Luzzato (Maya Sansa) in the assignment.
Its not that good.And a shame it is too because there is some real talent and great production values apparent in this film but it falls flat on storyline and plot.Some one went to a great deal of time and effort and expense to make this film but the final product leaves you with the feeling you just watched a "fair" made for TV Drmna.Its not a perfect movie but will probably entertain a small audience..
This flick, about four women chosen, blackmailed and coerced to work for the British as secret agents in occupied France during WWII, is one excellent and original work.
Watch the credits at the end of the film for her story.I've seen a lot of tough women on TV and in cinema.
The story takes place during WW 2, starting out in London, where four French women, in orders from the head of Special Operations Executive, (British department of covert warfare), are recruited by a French officer (Julien Boisselier) and his sister (Sophie Marceau), to attempt the rescue of an English agent (a geologist), wounded in hospital, in Nazi occupied France, who is in possession of important strategic information, and in danger of being discovered and taken prisoner by the Germans.From the beginning of this French production derived from a French language novel, the storyline makes it clear that this is a British controlled operation to safeguard information about the D day landings.
Sophie Marceau leads an excellent cast in this gripping movie.Based on true events it begins in 1944, a group of French servicewomen and resistance fighters are enlisted into the British Special Operations Executive commando group under the command of Louise Desfontaines and her brother Pierre.Their mission, to rescue a British army geologist caught reconnoitering the beaches at Normandy, and to kill a German SS colonel who is close to figuring out the imminent secret of D-Day, proves to be emotional and brutal.The film moves at a good pace and is so well acted you feel for the characters..
"Female Agents" from 2007 is the true story of Lise Villameur (here Louise Desfontaines, played by Sophie Marceau), an agent who worked against the Nazis during World War II.
There are several films about female World War II spies: Carve Her Name with Pride is one, also a true story and very moving, and the film Odette, also very good.Desfontaines is recruited by her brother Pierre (Julien Boisselier) to find women to help rescue a British geologist from a German hospital.
For the mission, Louise chooses Jeanne (Julie Depardieu), a prostitute who is in prison for murder; an explosives expert Gaëlle Lemenech (Déborah François); and the ex-fiancé of Colonel Karl Heindrich, Suzy Desprez (Marie Gillain).
He needs them to go to Paris to kill Colonel Heindrich who believes the Allies are planning to land in Normandy.Excellent film, suspenseful, gritty, dark, and atmospheric, with wonderful performances by everyone, but especially Marceau, who plays the tough, quick, and enterprising Louise.I'm not sure why this film received a low rating on IMDb, and I also don't know where the bland title came from.
I believe "Les femmes de l'ombre" means "Women of the Shadows." There must be something more exciting than "Female Agents."This isn't your typical movie; some of it is hard to watch, but the courage of these women is quite amazing..
Marceau portrays a woman with and on a deadly mission with selected other women not to seduce but to kill certain Germans in prep for D-Day. Marceau plays well her roles as sniper &/or assassin and team leader with a commanding yet understated performance.
First, let me say that I was fully satisfied by this Amazon story.It takes place during WW 2, in France, where four women are recruited by the head staff of the free french forces to escape a member of the Resistance prisoner of the Gestapo.It's an action movie, a heart gripping one.
At the time of Female Agent's production, and as a sentiment that has in all fairness hung around through to around about the present, the French were/are probably making the best films of any nation collectively in the world.
Female Agents ticks all of the above boxes; a pacey, highly enjoyable little yarn which tells a good story in an unabashed fashion whilst shedding light on the tales of those history has, to a fair old few, since forgotten: the woman out of the factory, and on the front-line of war.The film begins with a Bond-inspired pre-credits action sequence; Sophie Marceau, she of once of a Bond role, plays Louise Desfontaines: a woman who's seemingly at the top of her warmongering game in her sniping of an array of German soldiers on a cold, bleak evening illuminated only by that of the light brought about by the crude lamps dotted around this docklands area and the harsh headlamps to that of an array of German vehicles in and around the locale.
These include the likes of Maria (Sansa), a nurse; Suzy (Gillain), a woman formerly a stage strip tease performer; an explosives expert in Gaëlle (François) and that of Jeanne (Depardieu), who's dragged from prison and is there in the first place on some serious sanctions - she's killed, and she'll be asked to kill again.Once they are rounded up and taken to a British airfield additionally populated by that of the men of the American Air Force, a scene that will no doubt go down like a lead balloon stateside plays out in which a bomber crew make light of the women by wolf whistling as they strut past.
There are even splashes of Infernal Affairs; the film mutating into a film detailing a Frenchmen in league with the Nazi's discovered by the girls, and consequently forced by the girls, into working with the titular agents as one of their own are simultaneously caught and tortured by the Germans into revealing secrets which could ruin everything.The things about Female Agents we enjoy most lie with its director's ability to get on with proceedings; we enjoy the notion of two distinct factions, each with enough of a force behind them, barging through most of occupied Europe desiring their prize: the general wrongfulness or evilness of the Nazi war-machine under Heindrich chasing that of the empowered women looking to get away, although hang around long enough to save a few of their own, subverting that of, and continuing the sense of this being a crime film-come-'fallout-from-a-heist' movie, Mann's male dominated Heat or De Palma's The Untouchables as a film covering characters trapped in oneupmanship.
Louise Desfontaines (Sophie Marceau) and brother Pierre Desfontaines (Julien Boisselier) are part of Special Operations Executive tasked with extracting a British geologist who is testing the beaches of Normandy.
Later, Pierre Desfontaines forces an almost suicidal mission on the women to go to Paris and kill SS Colonel Heindrich who may know too much about Normandy.I like the recruiting and the various female characters.
The story of a team of amateur women assembled in a matter of three days to save the invasion in Normandy can possibly overcome the lack of credibility of the premises only if it is treated in a spirited easy comic manner, or if it adds some high thrill or emotional drama.
A film that pays homage to the bravery of the women of SOE who parachuted into occupied France has long been overdue and in my opinion is still to be made as this film falls short of the mark, however, not as insultingly as the Charlotte Gray film did, where the woman agent was portrayed as delicate and ditched her mission for the sake of a romance.
Justice has so far only been made to the real women agents in books and it is scandalous how film makers have overlooked the potential for making a credible movie given the abundance of real and amazing material out there.
If you are really interested in the subject you should read about agents such as Nancy Wake or the revealing book by Marcus Binney titled "The women who lived for danger", which tells the gripping stories of 10 different agents.
After a mere day of training, these poor girls manage to parachute at night without even a scratch, perform a perfectly synchronized strip show on music they'd never heard before and without the slightest possibility of a rehearsal.Sophie the sharp-shooter doesn't hold her breath while aiming, holds her rifles on both occasions at the shoulder, without support, hence shaking like a leaf, yet hitting her targets in the darkest of nights at the start of the film and later missing an unmissable shot in the subway with a state-of-the-art rifle in perfect conditions.At one point the girls get into a shoot-out (at the hospital) and hold their Stens at arm's length, like a bunch of dirty diapers, without getting their wrists damaged by the recoil and, of course, hitting their targets square on instead of shooting at birds.Such scenes were highly reminiscent of Charlie's Angels at their best, although the latter film is intended to be seen as funnily over-the-top, whereas the former is supposed to be realistic and based on true events.If all these failings were not sufficient to trigger bouts of hilarious laughter in the audience, the scenario pushes on and arranges for the girls to always be at the right spot at the right time with the right contacts, help and equipment, as though they had planned and rehearsed all the mishaps of their mission hundreds of times beforehand, a bit in the style of James Bond films.
The bad Nazis have the look and feel of choir boys.In short it feels like a girlie's remake of Inglorious Basterds, shallow as hell, making very little sense or, rather, asking the viewer to mentally fill the gaps where the director lacked the time, or skill, or both, to package an otherwise interesting story into a sensible unit.Contrary to some comments I've read, the French know how to make excellent action films, write credible scenarii, and act convincingly, probably more so than most productions made in Hollywood.
Unfortunately "les femmes de l'ombre" is a very bad example and shouldn't be seen as a landmark of French film-making, unless of course one looks at it as a comical parody of a would-be serious war-time story, in which case it remarkably hits the jackpot.I can't go so far as to recommend against watching it because, given enough imagination and little attention to detail, I wouldn't be surprised if someone found something interesting in it after all.
Accordingle brother and sister Marceau and Boissellier recruit three more French girls working in England, and sign them up for this one-off mission.
When a British agent is wounded and caught by the Germans while on a mission prior to the landing at Normandy, his superiors in England go into action enlisting exiled brother and sister, Pierre and Louise Desfontaines to fly into France to rescue the wounded man from his captors.There is little preparation before the actual D-Day invasion.
The attempt to get him out proves to be an immense job in which the women will show their courage, but at the same time, it will be a high price to pay for some in the group.Director Jean-Paul Salome, working with co-writer Laurent Vachaud, gives the audience an action packed film.
A very good French film about French women agents during WW II.
This is one of those films you happen to buy, but actually don't know a thing about, and that proves to be of star quality, everything very well done, and while on one plane just a war movie, in other ways quite outstanding.The story, in short, is about French girls who are pressed into service to rescue a British geologist, that have accidentally ended up in a hospital for Germans, in occupied France.Things go wrong, all but one dies, most being shot during operations, or tortured, by SS.
The women who in real life were infiltrated into NAZI occupied territory deserve their story be told.
The premise of Jean-Paul Salomé's 'Les femmes de l'ombre' is as simple as it is effective: a hastily assembled team of female commandos is tasked with liberating a British man who ended up in a German hospital.
As usual, the plan goes awry, and the women are asked to go to Paris to take care of some loose ends.What unfolds is a battle of wits, of torture, and of actual fire fights between the British SOE-affiliated French resistance fighters led by Pierre Desfontaines (Julien Boisselier) and his sister Louise Desfontaines (Sophie Marceau) on the one hand, and the loathsome Karl Heindrich (Moritz Bleibtreu) on the other.While the events often strain credulity, and sometimes feel completely impossible, I was able to enjoy this little adventure through German-occupied France because of its high pace, interesting locations, and credible visuals.