Charlotte Gray

This review was written for the theatrical release of "Charlotte Gray."

Seldom has the business of spies, sabotage, Nazi terror, the French Resistance and World War II romance been turned into such a prosaic muddle as "Charlotte Gray."

Lacking any sort of urgency, suspense or passion, the film mystifies rather than thrills. Even the efforts of two very good actors, Cate Blanchett and Billy Crudup, can't rescue the film from its purposeless melodrama.

This tour through wartime London and Vichy France takes one over much-traveled territory. Little that transpires justifies another journey since the filmmakers' sole purpose, seemingly, is to emphasize the sheer ordinariness of its characters and how even the waging of war can become routine. The reteaming of Blanchett and director Gillian Armstrong, who worked together on "Oscar and Lucinda," may intrigue adult moviegoers. But word-of-mouth will not help its cause. The film may enjoy more success on television as it has the look and feel of a cable movie.

Jeremy Brock's screenplay derives from a novel by Sebastian Faulks, an English author with a strong affinity for France. His stories focus on the impact of war on the lives of people and the odd ways such conflicts can ignite or extinguish the flames of passion.

His heroine is a Scottish woman in London doing her part in the war effort. Because of her fluency in French, she is recruited to serve with Britain's volunteer forces in France. Simultaneously, she falls in love with an RAF pilot on leave during the Blitz. When he is shot down over France, she redoubles her effort with the wild idea of somehow locating and rescuing him.

The movie truncates these early events too drastically to establish their credibility. One minute, Charlotte (Blanchett) meets her pilot (Rupert Penry-Jones) at a party, the next, they're bouncing in bed. A few moments of training is followed by Charlotte parachuting into southwestern France and literally landing on top of two young boys who will figure prominently in the plot.

"Charlotte's" France is the same one visited in last year's "Chocolat," in which everyone speaks English in a puzzling array of accents. For a fantasy, this is not a huge drawback. But for a movie in which national identity and the ability to speak a foreign tongue and blend into an alien background are crucial to the story, this becomes a mighty distraction.

When her fledgling outing as a courier goes awry, Charlotte seeks solace with her French contact, Resistance fighter Julien (Crudup). He turns her over to his crusty, old-world father (Michael Gambon in the film's one memorable performance). She takes up residence in the father's country manor, where he is hiding two young Jewish boys. She gets involved in sabotage and subversion not only with Julien but a war-weary English contact (Ron Cook) and other Resistance fighters whom the movie never personalizes.

Much of this bears evidence of drastic editorial trims. A school teacher (Anton Lesser), later to emerge as a key figure, barely appears until then. One suspense sequence comes together so clumsily you don't realize what's at stake until the end. Key relationships -- the romance between Charlotte and Julien and the animosity between Julien and his father -- are so sketchy that they never take hold.

Blanchett, dolled up with too much makeup and costumes to blend into any background, seems more lost than her character. A vagueness and, yes, even a grayness shroud Charlotte. Crudup, too, seems not to get a purchase on his character, at times remote and other times angry for no apparent reason. Gambon, though, is splendid, a gruff, pragmatic World War I veteran who has no fear for what the future may hold.

Production values are self-conscious and generic. The London scenes especially are plagued with back-lot phoniness. Stephen Warbeck's wistful music sometimes sounds more like a dirge.

CHARLOTTE GRAY
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Pictures in association with FilmFour and Senator Film
An Ecosse Films and Pod Film production
Producer: Sarah Curtis, Douglas Rae
Director: Gillian Armstrong
Screenwriter: Jeremy Brock
Based on the novel by: Sebastian Faulks
Executive producers: Paul Webster, Robert Bernstein, Hanno Huth
Director of photography: Dion Beebe
Production designer: Joseph Bennett
Music: Stephen Warbeck
Co-producers: Elinor Day, Catherine Kerr
Costume designer: Janty Yates
Editor: Nicholas Beauman
Color/stereo
Cast:
Charlotte Gray: Cate Blanchett
Julien Levade: Billy Crudup
Levande: Michael Gambon
Peter Gregory: Rupert Penry-Jones
Renech: Anton Lesser
Mirabel: Ron Cook
Running time -- 121 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13