Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #128762 in DVD
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: NTSC
• Original language: French
• Subtitled in: English

Amazon.com
Carole Bouquet stars as Lucie Aubrac, a heroine of the French resistance during World War II. Her husband Raymond (Daniel Auteuil) is a resistance fighter who helps sabotage Nazi trains. At a meeting, he and some compatriots are arrested, but believed to merely be black-marketeers. Lucie secures his release and enables them to fulfill their oath to spend every May 14 together, the anniversary of the first night they made love. The arrest of a resistance leader causes divisions; a meeting called to resolve them is raided, and Raymond is arrested again, along with an important resistance figure known as Max. Raymond endures brutal interrogations but is sentenced to death. With steely determination, Lucie plots to rescue him.

Lucie Aubrac is part thriller and part romance, but both halves are handled with a subdued discretion that doesn't prevent the movie from being deeply engaging. Meticulous and skillful, director Claude Berri paces his story carefully, paying attention to the details of life in occupied France. The fully developed atmosphere, never overstated, gives just the right frame to Lucie and Raymond's passionate marriage. Auteuil is solid, but it's Bouquet's film; her performance is as low-key as the movie, yet completely compelling and deeply affecting. Based on a true story. --Bret Fetzer

From The New Yorker
In 1943, a real-life French Resistance fighter who operated under the name Lucie Aubrac organized the rescue of her husband, Raymond, who had fallen into the clutches of the gestapo chief of Lyon, Klaus Barbie. The risk-taking Raymond Samuel (Daniel Auteuil) and Lucie Bernard (Carole Bouquet) are a very bourgeois couple, which is a fine and touching irony. Unfortunately, Claude Berri, who wrote and directed, doesn't see the humor in the story; he turns the material into a sanctification of marriage. After Lucie springs her husband, he puts his wedding ring back on so they can make love. Auteuil, a good actor, is so ennobled by Bouquet's seriousness that he can hardly speak. Enjoy this dream of the Resistance for the severely handsome color, the old cars, the noble gestures. In French. -David Denby
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Not a Hollywood Hack Job
This is an excellent French film about the French resistance in Paris in 1943. It is a well-told, suspenseful story, but what interests me most is what it would have been had it been in the hands of some Hollywood Spielbergian hack.

The plot is very simple. A Frenchman, one of the leaders of the resistance, is captured, released, then captured again and tortured. With the assistance of his faithful wife and others of the resistance, he escapes and is spirited to England.

In Hollywood, he would have been played by a boy, such as Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt. Or he would have been played by a rugged masculine type, scowling defiance at his enemies, such as Harrison Ford. In this film, he is simply a non-descript, middle-aged, tired man. Brave, but very fearful after his capture. The way it was I'm sure in real life.

The wife would have been played with fierce determination by some beautiful bimbo trying to establish her acting credentials. Julia Roberts with cleavage, for example, or Melanie Griffith with dark hair. In this film, the actress is beautiful, but her beauty is downplayed, except for those scenes in which she consciously uses it to advance the plot. We even get to see her disembark from a bicycle, wearing a frumpy skirt, and anklets.

In Hollywood, the German commander would have been a psychotic, sadistic lunatic, played with relish by a Kiefer Sutherland type, and the scenes of torture would have been gruesome and graphic. In this film, the actor was a very ordinary looking and acting man, and although the torture is not downplayed, it is not titillating either. There is even a German who performs a small kindness. In Hollywood this is not allowed. Germans are either vicious and sadistic, or automatons.

After the first attempt to release the protagonist fails, the Hollywood version would have had the plotters screaming at each other. "Why the &*^% did you do that, you stupid &^%$*(*&!" "What's the matter with you, you &*(^ %$#^!" They would have cried and screamed and thrown things to show how upset they were. In this film, they retire to a café, and quietly, but urgently, discuss what must be done next.

In short, this is a film about adults being forced to make difficult decisions during an extremely difficult time. It was created by adults with intelligence, and it requires a certain amount of intelligence from its viewers. This is a very fine movie. It is unfortunate that most American movies do not attempt to achieve any degree of intelligence whatsoever.

An Amazing Film About The French Resistance, Courage, & Love
After watching Claude Berri's "Jean de Florette," and "Manon of the Spring," I became a true fan. "Lucie Aubrac" just confirms my belief in Monsieur Berri's talents as a major director, and a discerning producer, in cinema today.

Set in Lyon, during the French Resistance in World War II, "Lucie Aubrac," played brilliantly by Carole Bouquet, is a woman struggling to save her husband from the hands of the Gestapo. The film is based on a true story, and Madame Aubrac's memoir, "Outwitting The Gestapo."

Raymond Aubrac (Daniel Auteuil), is a Resistance fighter in occupied Lyon, and has participated in many acts of sabotage against the Nazis. When he is captured by the Gestapo, headed by the notorious Klaus Barbie ("The Butcher Of Lyon"), he and his companions are believed to be dealing in black market goods, and not sabotage. Lucie, five months pregnant, is terrified that she, their small son, and the new baby will never see Raymond again. With tremendous courage, she sets out, single handedly, to rescue her husband.

Claude Berri directs this thriller, love story, and historical drama with great skill. Part of the film's beauty lies in its simplicity. This is not the history of the French Resistance. It is the personal story of one woman's courage. Everyday life in Lyon, street scenes, people going about their business in wartime France, are juxtaposed with the mortally dangerous activities of Resistance fighters, and with Lucie plotting her husband's escape. The love between Lucie and her husband is palpable, and her determination and intelligence are extraordinary. The scenes where she meets with Gestapo Chief Barbie are tension-packed. And there are no words to describe the emotion evoked when Lucie meets her imprisoned husband and pretends she does not know him .

Carole Bouquet perfectly captures Lucie's fierce determination, patriotism, and passionate love, in an understated manner. Here is a woman with an all important task to accomplish, and she will do what needs to be done to perform the task successfully. There is no time, or energy, to spare on excessive displays of emotion. No room for dramatics. She is focused. Daniel Auteuil, as the exhausted, middle-aged Raymond, fighting to survive torture and imprisonment, expresses more with a look, than many can with pages of dialogue.

I highly recommend this moving film. I know that I will watch it again.

When the French had backbone...
This is a real film about real people - and the original Aubracs were literally real people.

Ditto to everything Paul said. I would just like to add a few details in the hope of increasing people's awareness of what this French warrior goddess actually achieved. (I honoured Lucie with a significant mention in my first book.)

The film is wonderful, but in some ways it is a simplified version of the actual events - especially the ending.

Lucie Aubrac was five months pregnant when she planned and led a successful raid on the Nazi convoy that was taking her husband to his place of execution.

After the rescue, the Aubracs were hidden by loyal comrades for three months until an RAF covert operations aircraft could be sent to retrieve them.

On the night of their escape, the plane, which I believe was a Lockheed Hudson, became stuck in the mud of the landing field, with dawn and the Nazi patrols only a few hours away.

FIFTY local villagers risked their own lives to come to the aid of their beloved Resistance friends and soon the plane was pushed free.

Lucie's daughter was born only a few days after their safe arrival at a British airbase. Her courage and leadership drew praise from battle-hardened Resistance soldiers and RAF aircrews of the elite Moon Squadron.

This film is about true French spirit. About a people who would never surrender, never stop fighting, who helped countless Allied airmen escape back to England, and who eventually liberated Paris even without Allied help. That my friends, is what the real French are like.

A magnificent film.