With so much recent recollection of World War II, it might seem odd to describe “Strayed” as a World War II movie. In some ways it is, at least technically, a film about the war, but in other ways … well, read on.
The film is set in an unspecified area of western France, just after the fall of Paris to the Germans. On a road choked with fleeing refugees, a war widow, Odile (Emmanuelle Beart), travels with her two children.
The road is strafed and bombed by a German plane, and Odile’s car is destroyed (a very realistic and violent sequence). The three run into the forest for cover, accompanied by a young man who seems very street-smart.
He is Yvan (Gaspard Ulliel), a mysterious and almost feral teenager who can nevertheless help Odile survive. They come across an isolated mansion evacuated by its owners.
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Another world: Just after the fall of Paris to the Germans, a war widow (Emmanuelle Beart) and her two children take refuge in a country house with a suspicious teenager. This suspenseful idyll is well drawn by director Andre Techine, an expert at drawing out the unspoken tensions beneath the surface. (In French, with English subtitles.)
Rated: Not rated; probably R for nudity, violence. Now showing: Harvard Exit
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Yvan breaks into the house, and the four people create a family unit. Odile is reluctant at first; she’s a proper schoolteacher, and Yvan is something of a wild child (he can’t read, and he appears sexually inexperienced). But Odile is eventually swayed by his resourcefulness, and perhaps by the hint of sexual tension between them.
The remainder of the movie takes place in and around the mansion, with no more battle scenes and only a couple of stray soldiers passing through. Yet somehow this domestic drama does relate to the war, or at least the way war throws people out of their prescribed paths in life.
Director Andre Techine is one of the finest French filmmakers when he’s on his game. “Strayed” has some affinities with his masterpiece of youth, “Wild Reeds,” as even the titles suggest.
His focus in “Strayed” is not only on the developing attraction between Odile and Yvan, but also its effect on Odile’s 13-year-old son, well played by Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet. The boy needs Yvan as a father figure, but he becomes increasingly aware of Yvan’s erratic, untrustworthy character (which Odile doesn’t see, but the audience does).
Techine is very good at drawing out situations in which unspoken feelings simmer beneath the surface. We learn more from the way Odile teaches Yvan how to read than from anything they say to each other.
Emmanuelle Beart is terrific as usual. Shaved-headed Gaspard Ulliel is not an appealing performer, but maybe that’s part of the point.
We have no sense of time passing during this idyll, or where other people in the world are. “Strayed” describes a disconnected dream … until reality and war come to break the spell.
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