Memoir of War

Among its many notable achievements, Memoir of War is one of the best films I’ve seen about the ways in which grief can pull a person in both directions simultaneously. Whereas the film’s first half plays more like a thriller, the second half proves to be an emotionally wrenching interlude perched on pins and needles.

Every once in a while, the story of an individual slips through the cracks. Memoir of War is one of those stories and, as such, provides an unseen perspective to a plotline that we all know well.

Thierry is utterly convincing and compelling from first to last, in a deglamorized but sensual performance of tautly controlled severity and uncompromising rigor.

Ms. Thierry plays Marguerite with an understatement that can be enigmatic, seductive, or deliberately confounding. The picture as a whole doesn’t do justice to her committed performance.

While clearly adoring Duras’s work, Finkiel doesn’t credit the strength it took for her to ruthlessly detail the experience.

Mélanie Thierry does her best in the lead as Duras, but her character is maddeningly flat and dull.

Writer/director Emmanuel Finkiel tries very hard to adapt Duras’ modernist storytelling tactics to Memoir of War and, at times, even succeeds in translating the author’s opaque blurring of the objective and the subjective.