Review: Farewell, Mr Haffmann is an excellent French wartime thriller

4 stars

French collaboration with the Nazis during World War II is still a touchy subject. It forms the background for director and co-writer Fred Cavayé's absorbing new film (French title: Adieu, Monsieur Haffmann), using a particular set of circumstances and relationships to examine sobering questions of morality and character.

The film begins purposefully: Cavayé doesn't waste time. The film begins in Paris in 1941. Jewish jeweller Joseph Haffmann (Daniel Auteuil), sensing things are going to deteriorate sooner rather than later, sends his wife and children away to safety with the promise he will follow when he's sorted things out with the store.

Joseph offers his employee Francois Mercier (Gilles Lellouche) a deal: Francois will nominally "buy" the store and run it until the war is over. Then Joseph will return and reclaim the store and help the ambitious Francois start his own business.

It's agreed, but things go awry when Joseph is unable to leave as planned. He returns to the store and asks Francois to shelter him. Francois's wife Blanche (Sara Giradeau) is reluctant because of the danger involved but Francois feels obliged to help the man who's given him great opportunities.

Joseph stays in the basement, keeping quiet and reading a lot, and the Merciers live in the flat above the shop, the three of them eating together at night - all very civilised, very French.

But as anyone who's lived with housemates knows, hell can be other people, as Monsieur Sartre wrote, more or less.

The deterioration starts slowly: for safety's sake, Francois demands that Joseph confine himself to the cellar and he'll bring food down.

The tensions are exacerbated by the ongoing - and potentially deadly - risk of Joseph's presence as well as a family problem: the Merciers have been trying to have a child and it seems that Francois is sterile.

Joseph asks Francois to mail his letters to his family so they know he's safe. Francois is reluctant, thinking it's too risky despite no location being identified, but eventually agrees, provided Joseph agrees to do something for him in return - a big favour indeed.

Meanwhile, as more German soldiers come to Paris, they become good customers. Joseph is horrified when he finds out, especially when he has to work on the jewellery they buy - but what choice does he have?

While most of the action takes place in the three storeys of the building and the immediate vicinity, the confinement works to advantage: the three main characters all feel trapped and frustrated in different ways.

In another French film, Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game (1939), one of the characters says that "the awful thing about life is this: everybody has their reasons" and that's illustrated here vividly. The actors bring their complex characters to life superbly. It's not hard to sympathise with Joseph's loneliness, frustration and fear and his repugnance when asked to do certain things. Francois might seem less sympathetic, but he desires - to protect himself and his wife, to prosper, to have a child - are also understandable, even if some of the ways he tries to achieve them are highly questionable. How far, the film seems to be asking, would you go? And Blanche has her own journey.

The story takes a couple of unexpected turns and the climax is surprising but it works. Cavayé has - in an interview by Jane Freebury published in The Canberra Times the same day as this review - described the film as "a war thriller". It's a slow-burn film rather than fast and action-filled but it works.

If you're not allergic to subtitles (and if you are, get over it), this is well worth seeing.