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. With this in mind, we do enjoy a good French film; even more so if it's driven by women, because that can be good fun and since a good Second World War film makes for a fair old crack now and again, what's the problem with sitting down for a cut-and-thrust, causality driven World War 2 resistance picture about varying parties darting across occupied Europe? 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. Working with a few others, and under a high pressure situation as things spiral out of control inducing a gun fight, she manages to resurrect the situation and escape with her life amidst an unholy mess that should have been a mission executed more smoothly. It's 1944, and our Louise is placed at the forefront of a larger, more important mission that she will lead in the field, for which she will require the recruitment of certain others. The crew are a motley, disparate lot; a faction of women of varying ages, backgrounds and views on what constitutes a way of life together for this mission based in northern France. 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. Yes, it's in good fun but it is first and foremost director Jean-Paul Salomé highlighting the threat of both objectification and transgression these women face in a film of this nature; here addressing it and, by making us aware of such an item, steadily deviating from what would otherwise be an ill-minded approach to dealing with these women driving a film that will come to be rich in action and the process of placing these women and their bodies on the front-line of warfare. The women have a foil, a Nazi colonel whom is ahead of the game; a man whom manages to make frighteningly accurate predictions on where the imminent Normandy landings will take place. It is in fact a proposal put to an array of German higher-ups in a briefing room; a proposal which is promptly mocked by those within and therefore dismissed. The man is Karl Heindrich (Bleibtreu), and in spite of these disagreements, we sense is unafraid to make swift decisions and as a result of his predictions, must have a fair degree of intuition.
Desfontaines and her team's mission goes well, a job in a quaint manor house occupied by the Germans adhering to the Where Eagles Dare ideology of seducing and sneaking your way in but opting to shoot one's way out – blowing the odd thing up in the process not necessarily harming proceedings. Post job, the game changes; and while Salomé's film has been accused of borrowing an awful lot from various war films, The Dirty Dozen in particular, its twist after the opening act has it mostly feel like something in the region of Peckinpah's The Getaway or Frankenheimer's French-set chase thriller Ronin. 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. The film is sharp but tough to watch on the occasions it needs to be; thrilling and exciting, without ever exploiting the warfare as action, when it needs to be and makes for a really decent resistance movie in a recent canon of films that are as such.
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. Working with a few others, and under a high pressure situation as things spiral out of control inducing a gun fight, she manages to resurrect the situation and escape with her life amidst an unholy mess that should have been a mission executed more smoothly. It's 1944, and our Louise is placed at the forefront of a larger, more important mission that she will lead in the field, for which she will require the recruitment of certain others. The crew are a motley, disparate lot; a faction of women of varying ages, backgrounds and views on what constitutes a way of life together for this mission based in northern France. 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. Yes, it's in good fun but it is first and foremost director Jean-Paul Salomé highlighting the threat of both objectification and transgression these women face in a film of this nature; here addressing it and, by making us aware of such an item, steadily deviating from what would otherwise be an ill-minded approach to dealing with these women driving a film that will come to be rich in action and the process of placing these women and their bodies on the front-line of warfare. The women have a foil, a Nazi colonel whom is ahead of the game; a man whom manages to make frighteningly accurate predictions on where the imminent Normandy landings will take place. It is in fact a proposal put to an array of German higher-ups in a briefing room; a proposal which is promptly mocked by those within and therefore dismissed. The man is Karl Heindrich (Bleibtreu), and in spite of these disagreements, we sense is unafraid to make swift decisions and as a result of his predictions, must have a fair degree of intuition.
Desfontaines and her team's mission goes well, a job in a quaint manor house occupied by the Germans adhering to the Where Eagles Dare ideology of seducing and sneaking your way in but opting to shoot one's way out – blowing the odd thing up in the process not necessarily harming proceedings. Post job, the game changes; and while Salomé's film has been accused of borrowing an awful lot from various war films, The Dirty Dozen in particular, its twist after the opening act has it mostly feel like something in the region of Peckinpah's The Getaway or Frankenheimer's French-set chase thriller Ronin. 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. The film is sharp but tough to watch on the occasions it needs to be; thrilling and exciting, without ever exploiting the warfare as action, when it needs to be and makes for a really decent resistance movie in a recent canon of films that are as such.